Summary
Guest speaker Rev. Jon Hollifield preaches from Isaiah 6, emphasizing the importance of recognizing God's holiness and our own sinfulness. He explains that a proper vertical relationship with God is essential for understanding ourselves and improving our relationships with others. Hollifield concludes that true worship begins when we see God as He is and ourselves as we are, leading to a deeper appreciation of God's grace and the call to serve Him.
Welcome and Housekeeping
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Thank you, Reed and Owen.
I may ask you guys to come back and lead us in that song. I'd never heard that worship song before, but that was spot on.
That was on point. And so we may come back and sing that again at the end of the message. Thank you again for being here tonight. Thank you for coming back. So that is wonderful.
I'm excited. As James said, we had a good time together, a fellowship and just enjoying the day.
And of course, it was busy and James was able to minister there. And so we had a wonderful time. Turn in your Bibles to the book of Isaiah. The book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter number six. Isaiah chapter number six.
And we are going to be looking at this. I mentioned last night that we are going to be talking about, last night we talked about restoring your soul.
And I wanted to sort of bring your attention and bring your focus into the aspect and the importance of where your soul is to all of life.
Now, what we're going to do tonight is we're going to connect that. We're going to bring that back around at the importance of where God is in the center of that. Okay?
So this is going to seem like maybe we should have preached. I should have preached this or we should have covered this first and then talked about this. But I wanted to get you with an understanding and importance of your soul.
Now bring it back to the main thing that your soul is to be focused on. We get this right.
Then we're ready to look at how life begins to work out in all relationships. I say this many times in the counseling room. People come in here. I do marriage counseling.
And most of the time they're coming in and I'll sit there and I'll say, all right, sir, what seems to be the issue? You tell me. I'll start with you. You tell me what's going on. You know, I'll hear, oh, this is wrong. She don't do this. She does. She does.
She does. And I say, okay, well, ma'am, why don't you tell me what you believe the problem is, why you're here today? And he this, he this, he this, he this. And I'm like, okay, all right. So I see what the issue is.
The issue is both of you, okay? But one of the things that I realized is that people come to get help many times because they believe that there is, number one, either something going on with themselves that they're struggling with or there is something going
on with a relationship in their life that they're struggling with.
And one of the main points, the thesis that I want you to get and understand, the application, I'm going to give it to you right now, then we'll wrap it up at the end of the message. And that is this. You will never understand and relate well with yourself
and therefore you will never relate well with other relationships.
relationships, you will always have conflict, there will always be problems, until you get your vertical relationship in the right place.
This relationship, your vertical relationship with God is first and foremost and it affects everything that goes forth after that, your relationship with yourself.
One guy that I enjoy that has been a teacher of mine in many areas, he's wrote many books, he says this, he says, no one talks to you and no one influences you more than you.
Influencing Yourself
You talk to yourself and you influence yourself. You are listening to yourself constantly.
We talked about that a little bit last night, about meditation and how many things that you do this. And so that relationship that you have, how you're relating with yourself, how you're thinking, how you're feeling, your emotions, those kinds of things. But that is also contingent on how you're relating with God.
And the first place that we begin to understand how we relate well with God, I believe we find and see the key to that in this passage in Isaiah 6. So let's read Isaiah 6,
beginning in verse number 1. We're going to read the whole chapter this evening. Isaiah 6, verse number 1, it says this, 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, and with two he covered his feet. And with two he flew. And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 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.
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 for us? Then I said, Here am I. Send me. And he said, Go to this people.
Keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Then I said,
How long, O Lord? And he said, Until cities lie waste, without inhabitant, and houses, without people, and the land is a desolate waste,
and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land, and though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.
And the holy seed is its stump. Is this me?
It's the speaker over there? Okay. That's what you thought too. I think there's something wrong with the connection here. All right.
So here we have this chapter in Isaiah 6. Let me give a little bit of background to you, and I'm going to try to not get distracted, because one of the things that I enjoy is history, and I tend to get sort of stuck in history, and like explaining, looking into these things.
But we'll lay the groundwork, and lay the context of what's going on here.
First, you're probably familiar, if you've grown up in church, you've been in church a while, you're familiar with the nation of Israel and the reign of King David, right?
David became king of Israel, and he went through a lot of things, getting to be king, but he becomes king of Israel, and Israel flourishes.
It grows as a nation. It becomes a dominant power in the world.
And David wanted to do one thing. He had all of these accolades. He had all of these things. Do you remember what the one thing that David wanted to do was? It was build a temple for the Ark of the Covenant.
Build a place for God, because the Ark had already represented the presence of God with the people, and it always was in a tent. And he wanted, he was in a palace. He wanted something great for God.
And you remember what God told him through the prophet Nathan. He said, you're not going to do it. You're not going to do it because you're a man of blood. You've shed blood.
And he said, but your son can do it. So what does David do? David uses all of his resources, and he gathers everything, the plans, the materials,
everything to make the best temple ever. And then when Solomon, his son, becomes king, Solomon builds the temple, and it was absolutely amazing.
And Solomon is known as the wise king, but Solomon did some very foolish things to the point where Solomon actually got a judgment, or a judgment was rendered to him by the Lord because God said that his heart,
the many wives, the many pagan women that he was bringing in, of course, you probably know the joke, Solomon had a thousand wives. He had 300 concubines and 700 wives. How is that wise?
But because of that, God said, there will be judgment come on the kingdom. And what happens after that? Solomon dies.
His son Rehoboam becomes the king. But Rehoboam is not a good leader. And before long, there is a divide in the kingdom, and the civil war breaks out, and a military general named Jeroboam, and you know the story, the kingdom splits.
And so you have the kingdom of the north, the northern kingdom of Israel, that is known as Judah, and then you have the southern kingdom, which is known as Israel.
And so what you have in the book of 1 Kings and 2 Kings, and then when you get into the minor prophets, some of the minor prophet books are dealing with prophecies in the middle of that period where you had the divided kingdom.
And if you've gone through Sunday school or if you've heard some of these lessons before, you know that in one of the kingdoms, there were some good kings, some bad kings, and then in one kingdom, there was no good kings. They were all bad kings.
And the book of 1 and 2 Kings and the book of 1 and 2 Chronicles actually lays that out to where we know about that because it simply says this,
that king did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, or that king did what was right in the sight of the Lord. Isaiah was a prophet
towards the end of the southern kingdom. What happened to the northern kingdom? Well, eventually, God raised up the Assyrians and the Assyrians came in and they overthrew and they sacked that. They come in with an overpowering and they defeated the northern kingdom and they took them in as slaves. Okay?
And then the southern kingdom remained for about another 200 years. And what happens in the southern kingdom
is that you had a world power that was actually sort of raising up. It was getting momentum and this power got a leader. And this leader, maybe you've heard this guy before, this name, his name was Nebuchadnezzar.
You heard of Nebuchadnezzar? Yeah, he's from the book of Daniel. Well, Nebuchadnezzar was the leader of the nation of Babylon
or also known as the Chaldeans. And he had this idea.
He wanted to conquer all of the known world. And so what he did is the one sort of power that stood away, Israel was in his way. And he couldn't quite defeat them, but he wanted to conquer them.
He didn't want to utterly destroy them or utterly lay waste to them. He wanted to conquer. They conquered the people and the best way that that worked was they would enslave the people and then turn them, take away their national identity, turn them up. So he sieges the kingdom for like 20 years.
Finally, it gets overthrown. And what you get in the story of Daniel is Daniel is like a 20-year-old, 18-year-old. He's a young man. And Daniel actually goes with the enslaved in the whole book of Daniel 1-6. A lot of that is actually him being under the Babylonian Empire under King Nebuchadnezzar.
Where does Isaiah fit in all this? Isaiah is actually a prophet
who's, you see Isaiah, it's a big book, right? It's like 66 chapters. Isaiah's prophecy and his ministry and life happens in this way. Part of the book and his prophecy happens before it gets to that point.
And then he lives through Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon coming in and taking over the southern kingdom. And then he gives a few more prophecies before the end of his life to Israel after they are defeated people under the Babylonian Empire.
So, Isaiah's sitting here in the middle of all this. Now, where are we at when we come to Isaiah 6? Well, Isaiah was called to prophetic ministry in the year that King Uzziah died. Isaiah 6 once says, in the year King Uzziah died. This is around 740 B.C.
He lived long enough to record the death of Sennacherib.
We see that in Isaiah 37-38, which was 681 B.C.
However, most of the book cannot be dated in very general terms because few specific dates are given. What is the theme of this book? The central theme of the book of Isaiah is God himself who does all things for his own glory.
Who is the book of Isaiah written to? Well, the audience has a threefold sort of view in mind. The first one is God's rebellious people that craved worldly security. This is the state of Israel before they are defeated by Babylon and taken into slavery. The second is God's defeated people under worldly dominion.
That is Isaiah's prophecies to the nation of Israel after they have already been defeated and now they don't have a nation anymore. And then third, this book is written to all who hold fast to God's covenant. And that is you and I still today.
That is Christians. That is God's people even to this day.
What about King Uzziah? Well, King Uzziah, you're going to find the history about King Uzziah and we're going to actually come back around to King Uzziah in just a little bit. But King Uzziah
was one of those kings that was actually given the moniker of a good king. It says that King Uzziah did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord during his reign. See, King Uzziah came to the throne when Israel was in shambles.
Bad kings after bad kings after bad kings. And King Uzziah comes to the throne at the age of 16. At 16 years old, he becomes the king of this nation.
And he gets in his head that he wants to do something great. He wants to make Israel great again. Right? That's his plan. And you know what?
He actually does a lot of great things. He stays faithful to the Lord's commands and the law. He actually rebuilds the army to a great degree.
It causes them to have many different victories over even that old enemy that always rears its head against Israel, the Philistines. And he builds under his reign many great structures that are recorded in the book of 2 Chronicles. He was a successful king. His reign was 52 years long.
We don't really understand that in America. Maybe the English do with just... They had the monarch Queen Elizabeth for such a long time. But think about this. That's hard for us to grasp. 52 years with one leader.
And in 52 years, this is what we've had. In 52 years, we've had the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, eight years of Ronald Reagan, four years of George Bush,
eight years of Bill Clinton, eight years of George W. Bush, eight years of Barack Obama, four years of Donald Trump, four years of Joe Biden, and now President Trump again. All in 52 years. And I dare say, the mentioning of just some of those names ignited some emotion in some of you.
Opinions, at least, on who those names are and what they represent. But imagine, if you will, if you have a leader of your country who has lasted for 50 plus years, and he's done a good job.
Would that not endear your heart to the king? Would you not say, ah, we love this guy.
Look at all he's done. He's been a good king. Look at what we've had in the past. What our parents had. What our grandparents had. But look at what we've had. God has been good to us. God saved the king.
There's a sad part of this story that I'm going to come back around to in just a minute. But that's our setting. Israel, the future for Israel, they're about to get sacked by Babylon.
But where they are in the current state, they've had 52 years of a great king. 52 years of flourishing. 52 years of things going great in the nation. And the king has just died. And the nation is in mourning. And God, in his sovereignty, gives a vision,
comes in to give a message to a lone prophet named Isaiah.
And so we're going to look at a couple of things here in your notes. I want to look at three things as we break this chapter down. First, we'll look at what Isaiah saw. Then we'll look at what Isaiah said. And then we'll wrap up with what Isaiah heard. First, what Isaiah saw.
The Holiness of God
Verse 1, 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. What did Isaiah see? Well, first of all, he saw the Lord. What is the term?
I mentioned last night, when we were in Psalm 23, the term that was used for translating Lord in your Bible was the term Yahweh, which I explained was the covenant name of God. But you know what the term is actually here? It's actually a title for God, and it is Adonai.
You see, Adonai was a title that was given to give to the Lord. You know, whenever you, maybe you've seen this in television, but in history, and you look at one of the periods of history that I absolutely love is sort of the 15, 1600s of the British Empire, the kings and
all that, that medieval time almost. And you know what they used to do? They get this in television shows even today. But when a king was announced, they would list all of these different titles. The Lord Protectorate,
the head of the church, all these things, the King of England, and they would list all of these titles. Well, Adonai would have been like one of those titles for God. It means Sovereign One.
Now, when you see in your Bibles translated, the word Lord translated with all caps, many times your English translations, that's referring to his covenant name, Yahweh. But here we see, first of all, he recognizes the Lord as Adonai, Sovereign One. Why does he use that title?
Because what does he see? We're thinking about he's seeing this, and he says, I saw the Sovereign One. Think about the correlation there. Who just died?
The king. Who does he see? The king. The sovereign king. All right? What does he see? He sees him sitting upon a throne.
Sitting on a throne. And that is something, we saw it in the lyrics of some of the music that we sang tonight, but he is the king, and he rules as a king. He is on his throne. Psalm 46, verse 10 says, Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. Psalm 108, verse 5 says, Be exalted, O God, above the nations. Let your glory be over all the earth.
Psalm 113, verse 5. Who is like the Lord? Who is like Yahweh, our God, who is seated on high?
And then even in the New Testament, in Ephesians chapter 1, Paul gives this great doxology of praise to the Lord for the gospel.
And in verse 20 of chapter 1, he says that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.
See, one thing that you must know, you must understand, you must believe about your God is that he is the king. And when we understand that he is the king, that means he is over all. He is ruling.
We understand his authority reigns over all of us. And his authority doesn't reign over all the earth and over those that think that they have power in this earth, but his authority is over you. Tie it a little bit with last night's message. His authority is over your soul.
You do not exist on an island to do what you wish to do anytime you wish to do it. You are under the rule and authority of your king. Next, we see this,
or Isaiah sees this. He says, He saw him high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple. Now, that's interesting. That is interesting. Mainly because we as Americans don't really get this. Okay?
We are just not used to this type of thing. The closest thing we see is a wedding dress.
When a bride is coming down and they have the big poofy dress. I just did a wedding recently and they have the veil that comes down. But even in our American wedding culture, we still don't get to where the train is very large.
But you know one aspect that we see, and it doesn't happen a lot, but whenever you see a royal wedding in England.
I don't know, some of you are probably like me at some point.
It wasn't until I got married and my wife was into this and I was like, Oh, this is interesting. But you may not care about the English royalty and all that stuff, but some people really, they're like, That's fascinating stuff. It is interesting.
Maybe you've seen videos of the wedding of Kate and I don't even forget the dude's name. What's the prince? William?
William. All right. Or maybe you remember back to Princess Diana and Prince Charles' wedding. And that train,
that's what they call it, that thing that came down the back of her dress as she's walking down the aisle and the train was like, by the time she got to the front of the aisle, the train was still at the back door. It was so big.
And maybe my American sensibilities, I'm like,
Why did they do that? There's a purpose for it. Because she was going to be royalty. And that meant that that long train represented, she wasn't just any other girl. She wasn't just any other bride. She was becoming royalty. It was regal. It represented authority and position. And what did Isaiah say?
The train of his robe extended as long as I could see. No, he said, It filled the temple.
What is he saying? This is the king of kings. There's no one that gets bigger than this. There's no one that gets higher than this. There's no one who's over him.
So, a train that filled the temple. Then what is the next thing he sees? Well, verse 2, the seraphim. Verse 2, he says, Above him stood the seraphim.
And then he begins to describe them. First, we see their position. What is their position?
Above. They had a position. They had a job. They were doing a job. They were above him. And he says that each had six wings. So, then we see their appearance.
Each had six wings. With two, he covered his face. With two, he covered his feet. And with two, he flew. Now, I hate to break it to you. But angels, as described in the Bible, do not look like the angel topper on your Christmas tree. Okay?
Honestly, I'm not sure where that image comes from. But it's not accurate. Angels were pretty frightening creatures.
In fact, if you did a study on any time angels show up in the Bible, you know what the emotion that comes out of the person that sees the angel? Fear!
When angels show up, people pee their pants. They are probably not the most appealing looking characters. But think about this for a second.
Think about this. The angel has wings, and he says, with two wings, covers his face.
And then he has two wings that cover his feet. And then he had two wings that he flew around with. Now, think about that for a second. Why would the angel cover his feet and cover his face? It points to worthiness.
He's in the throne room. These angels are in the throne room of God, and they weren't worthy.
But they had a job to do. And that is where we see their action. What did they do? And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. They're worshiping. They're singing praises,
Reed. They're going well. That's their job for all of eternity. It's still right now. Think about that. Right now, these angels that we're reading about thousands of years ago,
that Isaiah saw, are doing that exactly right now. They are crying, Holy, holy, holy. Now, you cannot miss this, because this is massively important. Not just for your understanding, your knowledge of God, but also for you.
When you think of God, we sing a lot of worship songs, and we think a lot about God. You may listen to some wonderful songs on the radio, but when you think of God, what do you think about?
One writer who did a work on the attributes of God said this, What comes to your mind when you think of God is the most important thing about you.
So I ask that question to you. What do you think of when you think of your God? Some of us may say, love, and oh, He is a loving God. In fact, is that not what 1 John 4 says? God is love.
What about mercy? Mercy. He is a merciful God. That is one of His most wonderful attributes. What about grace? What about His goodness?
There is a hymn that just came out a few years ago that I just think is absolutely beautiful called The Goodness of God. Oh, those lyrics just really just are so glorifying to Him. But it praises His goodness. And He is good.
But do you know that there is not one of those attributes that exist in Scripture that are ever proclaimed to the superlative degree?
What does that mean? The superlative degree means something that is emphasized, not shouted or praised once, not proclaimed twice, but proclaimed three times. Meaning, this is the most important. Only one attribute. And you know what that is? His holiness.
Do you remember in the Gospels, we may learn this as kids in Sunday school or teach this to the kids in Sunday school, one of the Lord's, they call it the Lord's Prayer.
And you remember what it says, Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be your name. That word and that term hallowed in the Lord's Prayer when Jesus was trying to teach them how to pray points to the same attribute and the same thing that is getting at here in Isaiah 6 about the emphasis and the importance of the holiness of God.
So what does holiness mean? What does it mean when it says that he's holy? It means that he is so far above and so separate from anything that is not holy. He is perfect. And there is nothing that could ever improve upon God. He is so far above us.
Now, if you're getting maybe a sense of, oh, this God,
I feel like this is not the God that I understand. This is not a personal God. Just wait. Just wait.
But in order to understand, you must get a grasp as best as we can in our human understanding, which I don't know if we can get to it fully, the importance of his holiness.
24-7, angels are not going around proclaiming, love, love, love is the Lord.
They're not proclaiming, good, good, good is the Lord. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying he's not. I'm not saying he's not good. He is good. I'm not saying he's not love. He is love. But what are they proclaiming? Holy, holy, holy. That's what the angels declared.
Then we see the result of this. Watch what Isaiah saw in verse 4.
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke. Think about that. These were not angels that were going around saying, holy, holy, holy, holy. No.
The voice at which and the volume and the power at which they were proclaiming holiness shook the foundations.
Have you ever been, I wonder if any of you in here have ever experienced an earthquake.
Some have, some, whether you've been out west or something like that.
I've been, I remember one earthquake I was in and we were like, what was that?
I was in West Virginia at the time and it was a small earthquake that came through. There was one that actually happened in Tennessee and I didn't realize it but my daughter was like, everything was shaking in my room. I was like, really? It was cool downstairs.
But, but, you know what happens when that earthquake happens? you're going about everything like it's normal,
probably not much care. You, you think everything is just going and then all of a sudden what? The ground underneath you begins to shift and things change in an instant. What changes?
Your sense of safety is robbed from you just like that and concern takes over in an instant. Why? Because in the midst of that you are reminded of something
that you can't control your surroundings and you can't control this ground splitting up and you falling in it or maybe something falling on you and so there's fear that enters in right away.
Now, how do you think Isaiah is feeling? Isaiah is taking in all of this and as he's taking in all of this he describes what he sees as the foundations shaking before him.
I imagine there was definitely what the Bible describes as a holy fear of God experienced in this person.
Listen, I don't want to rob you from your viewpoint of your affection towards God. Listen, the more love and affection and joy that you find in the Lord, I love that. But I wonder when's the last time you were cognizant, aware of a fear of God?
You say, well that just doesn't make sense. And I would encourage you, this is not the message that I can go into it unless you guys want to stay here another hour tonight.
But I encourage you to do a study or look for a sermon that explains what the fear of God is. There's a great book out there by a guy named Michael Reeves. It's called Fear and Trembling. And he explains this doctrine very well.
But we see this in Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 6. And what is the result? He says that the foundation shook and it was filled with smoke.
I cannot glorify Christ. I'm going to read a couple notes I have written down here. I cannot glorify Christ as I'm supposed to until I see Him as He is. When we know God's place and God's presence, we will know God's person which is holy, holy, holy.
Now this brings us to our next point here, what Isaiah said. So, put yourself a little bit in Isaiah's shoes. How would you respond to this? You're seeing this.
And it's a little bit, I get it, I get it, it's difficult. It is probably impossible for us to put ourselves exactly in Isaiah's shoes.
Because you realize, you know, there's a lot of songs out there and I'm not trying to ruin any of your favorite hymns or anything, but there's a lot of songs out there that describe heaven. Do you realize that the Bible doesn't give us that much description of what heaven looks like?
It describes the New Jerusalem, but heaven, we are only given three descriptions about what heaven looks like in all of the Bible. And those three descriptions, all are descriptions of the exact same scene. One of those is Revelation chapter 4.
John the Revelator, he is taken up and he sees, and you know where he's at? The throne room of God. And it's interesting because if you compare what John is writing in Revelation 4 to what Isaiah is seeing in Isaiah 6,
you're getting the same account just by two different witnesses that are trying their best to describe what they're taking in. And if you want to know how crazy and how difficult that is, the third area,
well, Isaiah 6, 1, if I didn't already say that, Isaiah 6, 1, or 6 is one, Revelation 4 is one, the other is Ezekiel 1.
And people get really crazy lost in Ezekiel 1. Like, you think that guy's on drugs whenever you read Ezekiel 1. You're like, what is he explaining? And this is what they're doing. They are trying their best to describe what they are seeing in the throne room of God. So, I get it.
There's a part here where it's almost impossible for us to understand what we're seeing here. But God, in His sovereignty and the Holy Spirit, gave us the Scripture and these are the things that He wants us to glean from.
Isaiah's Response to God
So, it is, I think, a good thing and a wise thing to stop and meditate in this just a little bit. So, let's look at what Isaiah said. What was his response? In verse number 5, he said, 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, Now, let's back up just a second. Who is Isaiah? I said this last night, if you remember. Isaiah, most likely,
is the most spiritual person walking on the earth at that time. Could any of us say that? I know I can't. Definitely not. Not happening here.
Think about that. And what is his reaction when he gets a glimpse of the holiness of God, of the throne room of God, of the majesty of God, of his Adonai, the sovereign one.
He says, I'm sinful. I am wicked. And think about this. What was Isaiah's job? He was a prophet who spoke. And here's what's interesting. What is the area that he specifically says he's sinful in? His mouth. He says, I am a man of unclean lips.
We're talking about, if I was to say, what do you think is the most spiritual aspect of your life where God is probably the most pleased with you? And what we're seeing here is if that was for Isaiah, it would say that I proclaim God's word. And I do that.
And now, when he actually gets a glimpse of the holiness of God, he says, I'm wicked. I'm sinful. Woe is me!
So I've been going on here for just the last little bit and I've not really addressed the point of the title of the message, but I am going to be here.
The title of the message is restore your worship. And you begin to restore your worship and that right understanding of your vertical relationship with God. When you see him as he is. And by seeing him as he is, you see yourself as you are. And that is sinful.
We don't like thinking about that, do we? No, we like dwelling on the fact that we're loved and we're redeemed and we're... Yes, all of those are true.
But it doesn't change the fact that we still have not been completely glorified yet. And that we still sin.
And when we sin, we are sinning not just against maybe something that people don't really know or someone that is in our life that we can just go make things right with, but we're sinning against a holy God. A perfect, holy God. God. He says, I am sinful. I am utterly sinful.
He says, I have seen God. I have seen the King. The Lord of hosts.
And what we see next is absolutely amazing. And this is where we see the gospel in the story all the way back in Isaiah 6. What is it? Look at verse 6. Then, when Isaiah recognized his sin, what happened? One of the seraphim came to him. Not before. After.
Having his hand, in his hand, a burning coal that he had taken with the tongs of 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. What is that? That's grace.
Because in the midst of seeing the majesty and the perfect and the holiness of God that cannot tolerate sin, that cannot have any part of sin, and here Isaiah sees him and he says, I am, I can't be here.
I am sinful. What am I doing here? I am of unclean lips. I don't know what to do. He's perfect. He's holy. I'm not. Woe is me. And God says, yeah, you're right. You can't do anything about it. But I can. And we see that his sin is atoned for. And even today,
we get to experience that same beautiful grace from a holy God with Christ's sacrifice on the cross to atone for your sins, to atone for my sins. He entered the temple. I did jump past this,
but I do want to give you this sort of part of the trepidation of Isaiah in this because this is the rest of the story with Uzziah. See, Uzziah was a great king. Uzziah had a problem. Like, some of us face a temptation when things are doing well,
when people are patting us on the back and saying, you've been doing a great job,
when we've been really doing what God wants us to do and obeying Him and following through and doing a good job at it. What's that subtle, sinful temptation that can arise in our hearts? Pride.
And see, this is what happens with King Uzziah. The Bible actually says in 2 Chronicles 26 that pride entered his heart and he wanted to do something. He thought with all of his accomplishments and how God was pleased with him, he wanted to go burn incense to God. What's the problem?
That's not how God said things were supposed to be done. See, there was a role.
The people, even the king, would have to humble themselves and go to the priest. And the priest, only the priest or the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies and make an incense offering or make a burnt incense for the sins of a person.
But Uzziah said, I want to do this. So he tries to go in and the priest says, you can't do this. Please, king.
Get this. This is not like he had a thing with the priest and they didn't like each other and this is like political intrigue. They loved each other.
They loved their king. He was a good king and he's begging with him, don't do this. In fact, he calls 70 other of the priests together and they're all trying to convince him and as they're doing this, he gets angry.
King Uzziah gets angry. Here was the opportunity for him to humble himself and say, you know what? You're right. This is not my role. I may be the king, but you're right. Instead, his pride goes deeper. He gets angry and here's what happens.
Right there in the middle of the turmoil where he's trying to get through and the priests are holding back and pleading with him not to do it,
the Bible says that God struck him immediately with leprosy on his forehead
and as soon as that leprosy pops up, the high priest says, you must get out. You have leprosy. You are unclean and King Uzziah
recognized that he had leprosy on his head and he ran out of there and they had to separate him and then the word went around the kingdom that the king was a leper and it wasn't long after that that he died in shame and you talk about a broken hearted nation
and now you have Isaiah and God says, come here Isaiah, Isaiah,
I want to show you something and Isaiah sitting here sort of broken hearted was to become of our nation. God, I thought this guy was a good king and he gets put before the holiness of God and he says, whoa, if I thought he was good, if I thought I'm good,
Hope in Judgment
I'm sinful. I have my own problems. Forget the sin of the king. I am sinful and God says, no, no, no, no, your sin is atoned for and so we see that and with that we then get, I'm going to wrap this up, what Isaiah heard or what,
yeah, what, let's see, what Isaiah, yeah, what Isaiah heard, what Isaiah heard, verse number eight,
and I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, Here I am, send me.
Go and say to this people. And then he gives them the message. We read it earlier and he gives them this message. And I'm just going to sum it up this way. The message is not what you'd probably think the message would be. Because it's not really what we say to people today.
So imagine, if you will,
if Pastor James gets up here and preaches and he tells you to go out and give the gospel to people, which I'm sure he does, right? You've heard that before.
Go give the gospel to people. That's what we need to be doing. We need to be telling the lost, right? Well, here's what God tells Isaiah to do. He says, Yeah, I want you to go give a message to all the people. Tell them this. That they're going to lose everything.
That they're going to lose their nation. That it's going to become a desolate land. Their worship is going to be taken away. The temple, all this stuff. It's all going to be gone. And there's a little snippet in the middle of that message. You can see it where Isaiah says, What's his reaction?
I mean, you're probably thinking, That's not good news. That's not good news.
And you know what Isaiah says? His answer is this. How long?
I don't know what he was meaning by that. Was he meaning how long do I tell them this? I think it was more along this. How long are we going to experience this?
And he doesn't really give them a timeline. And he sees this and you come down to it. And he says this. He says, Watch the answer.
This is not the common gospel you hear today in churches. What does he say? Here's what God's answer is when he says, How long do we give this type of message? He says, Until cities lie waste without inhabitant and houses without people,
the land a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and forsaken places are many in the midst of the land, and though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again like a terebinth or an
oak whose stump remains when it is failed. He's saying, You're going to get wiped out.
I'm not telling you when it's going to end. But is that a hopeless message? That's not where it ends.
That's the great thing about the gospel. Because here's the thing about the gospel. You can't just say, Hey, God's got a wonderful plan for your life. Will you just come to Christ? Your life is going to get a lot better. That is not the gospel.
Because you have to give the bad news before you give the hope. We have to deal with sin.
And people don't want to hear that. We don't want to hear that. We struggle with telling it.
Because we're like, What? If we tell them that their sin and their sin is wicked before Holy God, they're not going to listen to us. Does God say, Oh, yeah, that's right.
If you're going to hurt their feelings, don't tell them. No.
No. And that's why Isaiah's like, How long do I have to do this? But there's hope.
What's the last line of the message? The last line of the prophet. The holy seed is its stump.
I'm going to take you down to nothing until the last thing there is, is my seed. Who is it? Who's the stump? Christ. And I will send Christ. I will send the Messiah. I will send my son to redeem my people. That's the message.
Now, I ran through that. I can fill in for the notes, but I want to get to my application. What Isaiah heard, you had the question, you had the response, and then the instruction.
Those last three blanks, the question, the response, and the instruction. Let me give you my application here. Number one, if you are going to restore your worship, you must see God how he truly is.
And how do you do that? This is how he's revealed himself. Find out what it says about him.
When your pastor gets up here and preaches from the book of Acts, you know what he's doing?
His series has been about how the church has been going, but you know what you're going to see all through the book of Acts? Not just truths about how the church began, all that stuff, but you know what else you're seeing? You're seeing aspects of God.
And how God works in his people. It's woven throughout this book. When you're reading any passage, ask this question, what is this passage teaching me about God?
How is his character coming through in this truth, in this story? What is he doing? See God how he truly is. And of course, we saw in Isaiah 6 that he's holy, holy, holy. Number two, see yourself for who you truly are.
Understanding Grace
You don't deserve heaven. You don't deserve salvation. That defeats the purpose of grace.
Grace is not, it ceases to have meaning if we think we deserved it. It's because we don't deserve it. We must recognize our sinfulness before a holy God. Number three, see his grace regularly applied.
That was one of the lyrics, I think. I don't remember the second song or the third song, but one of those lines. How can I stay here in a bed of shame? Whenever I've been given so much grace. See his grace applied to you.
And why is that such a beautiful thing? Because we are sinful. And then this.
The last one I'm going to say, I'm going to set it up. Just, let's go back through it. Isaiah does what? And this is sort of a structure. We actually structure our worship service in this type of way.
At Grace Community Church there in Tennessee. Each Sunday, we go through adoration, seeing God who he is. We sing hymns of adoration.
And when we do that, the natural output of seeing God and praising God and getting a glimpse of God in our hymn of adoration. It brings us to how we actually are and that we are sinful and we need his forgiveness. And so we sing a song of confession.
One of the songs we've just been singing here lately during that time is, Lord, I need you. Have you ever heard that hymn? Lord, I need you. Oh, I need you. My one defense, my righteousness.
And so we are confessing our need for God because of our sinfulness. And then we sing a song of assurance. Because we sing a hymn that says, that declares how he in our sinful state has given us grace.
And then we go into thanksgiving. But then we move to instruction because watch this pattern.
And you actually can find it in many other places in the Bible. When you see God for who he is and then you see yourself for who you are and then you recognize that God has applied grace to your sinfulness, you know what the natural outpouring should be? Two things. Gratitude.
Thankfulness to your God. Pastor James should not have to preach a message on thanksgiving to get you to be a thankful people. It should be so natural when understanding what God's done for you. So gratitude. Here's the second one. Service.
Out of all of this, you see Isaiah say a couple of things. I'm sinful.
Woe is me. I am undone. Grace. The burning coal is there. His sins are atoned for. And then you hear God give a declaration of message.
The Call to Action
And what is that? Who's going to go for us? He didn't waste no time. Send me. Send me. So a natural inclination of the gospel. And that's what we see here. God's holiness.
My sinfulness. God's grace applied to my sinfulness. My thankfulness for God's provision of grace through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I've got to go do something for him. I've got to serve.
I've got to serve him. So let me run through these real quick and I'll pray. And then I would like, if you guys can, that last worship song you sung, Holy Forever, sing that again. See God for how he truly is.
See yourself for who you truly are. See his grace regularly applied. And lastly, serve God how you were created to serve. Serve. Serve God how you were created to serve. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for your word.
And thank you for how you used this prophet, this man, and gave him with something we probably wouldn't even have been able to stand.
Oh, the terror that he went through seeing this, but the joy that he saw with the grace applied to him as his sins were atoned for. And we think of that even today as we think of how Christ has atoned for our sins. Oh, God, thank you.
God, help us as we understand how we need you in our life, never to lose the sight of how holy you are. God, we love you. And we give you praise. In Jesus' name, amen.
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