Isaiah

In the Old Testament the prophet Isaiah saw a vision of God seated on his throne on this experience. Isaiah not only discovered who God is, but he also discovered who Isaiah was and so he is crushed by the contrast between his impurity, his corruption and the perfection of the God that he is saying in this vision, that moment when Isaiah realizes the sinfulness is a powerful example of repentance in light of God's holiness.

Isaiah saw himself for who we really was today on Renewing Your Mind nursing scroll explains why this prophetic Old Testament passage means so much to New Testament Christians this morning were going to look briefly at a major prophet of the Old Testament.

In fact, a profit that many believe is the most important prophet of the Old Testament, and I'm thinking of course of the prophet Isaiah, whose name is a compound of the Hebrew words that mean the Lord is my salvation and of all the prophets of the Old Testament to for the most part were called from obscurity and out of the wilderness and were given the word of God to announce to the people. Isaiah is quite different from them as he comes from the aristocracy. He was obviously a highly educated person and fit into the upper strata of the economic and social climate of the nation as it were he hobnob with the kings of the day and was seen as an ambassador to the royal court, although after while some of the tone of his messages to the kings, took away some of his acclaim fact that we prophesied chiefly in the eighth century BC. He lived into the early years of the seventh century BC and according to tradition, he was martyred under the king Manassas of that. Now Isaiah's book is so important because it is so heavily messianic and its prophetic orientation, that is the prophet Isaiah had much to say about the character of the person and the work of the Messiah who was to come.

And even though we turn to the book of Isaiah for this future prediction and foretelling of the glorious manifestation of God to the people of Israel in the main, his prophecy in the Old Testament is a prophecy of judgment against Judea against Jerusalem and against an unrepentant populace but yet he tempered his prophecies of judgment with the promise of God's future restoration of a remnant, a small portion of the people who would be redeemed and again his book is so important to us because of the content that is cited in the New Testament is being fulfilled in the person of Christ. Now, as you know, at least those of you who were members of St. Andrews workmen regular for some time and visiting us. You know that the call of Isaiah is memorialized in our sanctuary with our stained-glass window because the stained-glass window represents the experience that Isaiah had when he had the vision of the Lord, high and lifted up in the heavenly temple. I preached on Isaiah 6. So many times, but there is an dimension to this tax that I would like to spend a couple of moments looking at with you this morning and that is after we have this description of the majestic vision that Isaiah has which absolutely devastates him.

He goes through a crisis of personal disintegration where he declares that he is undone or he is ruined after he gazes at the unveiled glory of the holiness of God.

As I've said many times on this experience. Isaiah not only discovered who God is, but he also discovered who Isaiah was and so he is crushed by the contrast between his impurity, his corruption and the perfection of the God that he is saying in this vision than the portion of the text I want to see us after God stoops to heal him.

We read one of the seraphim flew to me having a sandal live coal which you taken with the tongs from the altar and he touched my mouth with it and he said, behold this is touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away and your sin is purchased so that God condescends to heal this broken man whom he is going to call to be a spokesman to the nation this man who speaks of having a dirty mouth. The seraph goes to the owner takes the red-hot goal brings it over and as it were, purges his lips purpose is not to punish him or destroy him. But to cleanse him from the infection that is so central to his life and so then God says behold this is touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away your sin is purchased. Now here's the part and also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us than Isaiah said I said here my it significant that he didn't say here I am, because his response is not to indicate his location. God knew where he was on the floor before him. With God's sight whom shall I send who will go for us and Isaiah who's just been completely ruined and devastated but forgiven said here I am, send me if that doesn't reflect not only the common course of a prophets call it also reflects what I would think would be the normative experience of every Christian and I have to say to that. One of the things that bothers me. As I think back to the Old Testament and the role of the priest and how often the priesthood became corrupt and the community was infected by false prophets, and we read the injunction in the Old Testament let the minister we between the porch and the altar.

If we were to transfer that to New Testament times and apply to the current situation, it would go something like this.

Let the minister weep between the study in the pulpit. The only possible validation for anyone to presume to speak the word of God is that our lips have been purged by the coal and the fire of God and he is removed our iniquities from us and so the license for preaching is not our righteousness.

It's our forgiveness. It's our experience of the grace of God and and that I'm sure. Isaiah understands here because he's just complained of his personal total devastation and if ever a man knew he was not worthy to go in the name of the Lord. The moment he experiences the forgiveness of God, and God says, whom shall I send, and who will go for us.

Isaiah raises the same here. My such as I am blisters on my lips send me as a listener were goddesses. Here's his commission. God said go and tell this people keep on hearing but do not understand.

Keep on saying we do not perceive make the heart of this people dull in their ears heavy, and shut their eyes last they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and returning the healed. This is one most neglected motifs in all of sacred Scripture.

In our day and is not found simply, in an obscure announcement to the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament of our Lord himself in the New Testament when the Bible explains why he speaks in parables. What is the answer. He speaks in parables to reveal the truth to some, and to conceal it from others.

But the parables are illustrative and illuminating only to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see, because the word of God is a two edge sword. No one remains the same.

After hearing the word of God.

I know that the foolish way that God has chosen to save the world is through the foolishness of preaching.

And I know that God associates his power with the proclamation of the word and I know that he is guaranteed that his word will never return to him void so it is not an exercise in futility to proclaim that work. But not only that I know that every sermon I give changes you. It either nurtures you and the degree of that nurture may be infinitesimal so small that you can't possibly detect it but a Christian cannot be un-changed by hearing the word of God and an unbeliever cannot be unchanged from hearing the word of God either because when that word goes forth, you either grow imperceptibly or imperceptibly, your heart is hardened, but there is no neutrality to the hearing the word and now when Isaiah gets his marching orders pieces. I want to go and I want to go to these people. I want you to shut their eyes hardened their heart close their ears unless they see or hear and repent. In other words, God says. Isaiah I'm going to use you to proclaim my word to harden the hearts of this nation and that is an act of judgment is simple. How can that be fair will. Here's what it is meant, God is saying is if you people don't want to hear my word fine.

I'll take away your capacity for hearing.

You don't want to see how make you spiritually blind you don't want to hear.

I will cover your ears. That's how God does to stiffnecked people and that's what he gives as the commission ties Isaiah hears that Lisa will wait a minute. Maybe I spoke too fast when I said here my send me.

I didn't know that I was volunteering for that kind of omission to know what Cisse then I said Lord, how long want to have to do. Here's the answer. Go said until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant, until the houses are without a man until the land is utterly desolate. The Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land is the gospel but yet 1/10 will be unit and will be returning before consuming as a turbans career as an oak whose stump remains when it is cut down so the holy seed shall see its stump. I have redeemed an entire nation of called them to be my people, and that I would be there.but they have rejected me and so I'm going to cast them away. There worthy of being cut down and thrown into the fire. But when a tree is felt a stump remains so I have For myself 10% out of this nation.

A remnant that I will redeem now that theme of a remnant is saved by God is central not only to Isaiah's prophecy, but the entire prophecy of the Old Testament, and if it is that you are a Christian today than you were part of that holy seed you're part of that redemptive ties with God in spirit, we ought never to forget. Well, let's look at some of the other things that Isaiah does in his mission, which throughout the second portion of the book. Isaiah prophesies as one who will come as Messiah who will bear the sins of his people.

Remember the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip encounters in the book of acts and is reading from the text of Isaiah Phillips of the understand what you're hearing here guy has no idea and he was reading from the text of Isaiah 53 Philip explains it to one the most important Old Testament passages with respect to the passion of crisis. Look at it again you hear this often. We also do this is my favorite Scripture to read during the celebration of holy Communion and again parenthetically there's a method in our madness. There's a reason why we read the Scripture during the distribution of the elements because his reform people we are totally committed to the idea that word and sacrament belong together.

When the sacrament has been divorced from the word in church history, it has become disastrous and one the word has been isolated from the sacrament. It is been severely weakened crisis given both the word and the sacraments to his people and they belong together. That's why we have a sermon in the same day that we celebrate the Lord's supper and when we celebrate the Lord's supper is attended by the word in the earliest days of the liturgies of the Reformation that custom was established of reading Scripture during the celebration of the sacraments. Why do my favorite text courses. Isaiah 53. Let me just remind you of who has believed our report to whom is the arm of the Lord been revealed. If you go back earlier than the earlier prophecies I read about that tender shoot from the stem of Jesse would rise up here it is again for he shall grow up before him as a tender plant as a root out of dry ground. Some of you have been in parched areas of the country or in other nations where in the planes. For example, when there's a drought is not sand as the basis for the ground but it turns to Clay and that hard clay as it is baked by the sun relentlessly without any moisture coming through rain. What happens to that land. It cracks the beer been in one of those places where you see a parched land were nothing is growing and then you look over and you'll see one little shoot of a weedeater of the beginning of a tree bursting out of that crevice in that baked land and it looks like it has no chance of survival is is going to be destroyed by the sun and the weather and I and that's how the prophecy predicts the coming of the Messiah grow up as a root out of dry ground dry ground is Israel, barren land. He has no form or comeliness when we see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. But he's despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him.

He was despised, and we did not esteem him when you come into the presence of people that you admire and esteem. You stare at them you gaze at them. You hope against hope that you will capture their return glance that they would look at you but if you see somebody that's horribly disfigured, unspeakably ugly. The natural human response to that is to turn away your head or if you have contempt for somebody and think that there beneath your dignity. You avert your gaze when you pass them on the street as one laborer in a steel foundry said to me. On one occasion management comes onto the foundry floor and when he sees me drops as it looks away and that person felt stripped of his dignity as people avoided looking at him, but surely he has borne our grief's carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

Here's the vicarious ministry of the Messiah, the so important, but he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

For all we like sheep have gone astray, returned everyone to his own way, the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed. He was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before cheers is silent, so he opened not his mouth and he was taken from prison and from judgment and who will declare his generation, for he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgressions of my people he was stricken.

Here's where the transition comes from humiliation to exultation. They made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich at his death because he had done no violence, and because there was no deceit in his mouth. You see that subtle change from humiliation that when Christ was crucified instead of his body being thrown in the garbage sheep called Gahanna never stop burning outside the city limits of Jerusalem instead his friends and followers intercede with Pilate and they give him the body so it can be properly anointed and he is buried in a wealthy man's tomb anointed with the finest spices, just as the Texas made his grave with the rich in his death, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Notice that his bruises come not from pilots or Caiaphas or from the mob from the father. He is putting the grief when you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed shall prolong his days the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand is probably my favorite portion of this chapter, and he shall see the labor of the Civil War. The older text shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied when our Lord looks at you if you are his. You are the fruit of the birth pangs. He looks at you and he sees the fruit of his labor. The result of the travail of his soul and he satisfied by his knowledge my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul into death and he was numbered with the transgressors and bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors that I think this is one of the most quoted passages of homesickness. No wonder the early church seized upon Isaiah 53 clarify for them the crisis in their leader was taken from glad you joined us in this Thursday for Renewing Your Mind. I believe web you've heard me say before that I was a leak in your student long before I had the privilege of coming to serve your religion or ministries or sees clear teaching was life-changing for me and I know many of you and listeners like Brian feel the same way about know what no one else is daring to talk about it at the nation or election credible and it sparked interest in me. I started reading Romans Romans nine Ephesians 1 and I started reading things like AW Pink and all the other theologians and he ignited a passionate being yet we understand the historical context of why Protestant separate Catholicism and I became really passionate and numb.

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Why then is there evil in the world. RC will address that question tomorrow. Here on Renewing Your Mind