Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2007 : February 4, 2007

Theme: God Has Made You Ready

Church year occasion: Epiphany 5

Maybe you've heard of the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas. That's called the Butterfly Effect Theory. Do you buy in to that theory? I'm not sure I do, although it does sound kind of intriguing, doesn't it? Basically it says that some very small thing that happens half way around the world can have an effect here, in our everyday lives. If it's true, we need to find those butterflies that sent this cold weather down here and make them stop flapping their wings. If only it were that simple.

Sometimes we treat our spiritual lives that way, whether we realize it or not. We might reason with God by saying, "If you can just show me one small supernatural thing, one tiny, little miracle, then I will be ready to serve you and it will make big changes in my life." Wouldn't it be great if God worked that way? Actually, at times he did. He appeared to Moses in a bush that didn't burn up. That got his attention. Gideon needed three small miracles before he was ready to do what God wanted him to do -- a small fire that consumed his offering, fleece that was soaked with dew while the ground it was lying on was completely dry, and then the fleece dry with the ground wet.

Isaiah didn't ask for a miracle, but he sure got one. He received the vision we just read about. (Isaiah 6:1-8) But he still wasn't ready to follow God's will. It took something far greater even than a great display of God's almighty power and glory -- it took a mighty demonstration of God's amazing grace to change Isaiah's life around. That's what it takes for us. Are you ready to serve God in the life he has mapped out for you? Let's learn from Isaiah this morning as we see that God has made you ready -- ready to proclaim his gospel because you have seen his glory hidden in his grace.

Let's look again at Isaiah's vision, and this time actually get a picture in your mind of what Isaiah saw. He says, "I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple." We might think of a train a bride wears with her wedding dress, but here it is the robe God wears as our almighty King and great High Priest. "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." This is the only place in the entire Bible where seraphs are mentioned. The only thing we can say is that they are a class of angels, like cherubim. Here they are pictured with six wings. They cover their faces and their feet in humility before God almighty. And with the other pair of wings they are flying, ready to do God's bidding at a moment's notice. "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."

What a sight! God was making Isaiah ready as his prophet by seeing his glory. Isaiah saw that God was the King of kings. He had no equal on earth or heaven. The whole earth was full of his glory. We see God's glory proclaimed to us every day when we see the wonders of creation. He was also showing Isaiah that he was the judge of mankind. Nothing could stand before his righteous judgments. No one except these heavenly beings, the seraphim, could sit in on his throne room because of his glory and perfection. And this was just a glimpse of the almighty God of the universe. If he revealed his full glory to Isaiah, Isaiah's life would have been snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane.

Isaiah didn't need the angels to declare God's holiness three times to understand how holy God was. Holy means that God is perfect in every way -- absolutely perfect. But that isn't even the main point of being holy. Holy means "separate." God is completely set apart from us. He doesn't need us. We could be as insignificant to him as an ant is to us, or as drop of water is to the entire ocean. And this is where we begin to see God's true glory. The almighty God of the universe, whom the heavens cannot contain, was coming to a young mortal man to make him ready for something truly great. But Isaiah wasn't ready yet.

Seeing even a glimpse of God's infinite glory certainly had its effect on Isaiah. It showed him how inglorious he was. In the presence of the holy God, Isaiah could only see himself as a wretched, unworthy sinner. Verse 5: "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." Seeing God in his glory, there was only one thought in Isaiah's mind -- "AAGGHH! I shouldn't be here. I am utterly sinful." His presence threw a cloud on this holy assembly like a spot of soot on a clean white tablecloth. But this was the very thing God wanted Isaiah to see. A glimpse of God's glory is enough to blow us away. But if we think that's amazing, we haven't seen anything yet. The disciples were amazed when they saw Jesus performing miracles. But he told them they would see greater things than these miracles. They would behold God's grace.

How can we see God's grace? Only when we see how unholy we are before the holy God. Isaiah recognized it right away. Isaiah knew that God demands perfection. We say that all the time. But hopefully it doesn't take a vision of God himself to us directly to understand what that means. We can't give God perfection. The angels could proclaim God's praises because they are holy. But even our praises to God this morning aren't any good in and of themselves because they come from sinners, you and me, who have unclean lips because we have unclean, unholy hearts. Jesus said, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander." (Matthew 15:19) We aren't ready to stand before God either, with hearts like that. Those sinful, wicked hearts spill out into our lives as we live for ourselves and hurt others by our words and actions. As a result, our sins have separated us from God because he is holy and we are not at all holy. By our sins, we have spit in God's face. Imagine Isaiah trying to do that as God is seated on his throne in his glory! And then imagine what God's reaction would be! No matter how hot the fires of hell are, it wouldn't be enough to punish something so godless as our sins against God -- and we do them every single day! We have to join Isaiah in saying, "Woe is me! I'm not ready to face God!"

And that is where we need to be -- in terror over our godless lives -- before we can really see God's glory. God didn't punish us for what we brought on ourselves. No. He punished an innocent victim instead. He punished his own Son. He sacrificed his own Son so we wouldn't have to die eternally in the fires of hell. The angel shows this by picking up a coal from the altar and touching Isaiah's lips and saying in verses 6-7: "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.' " This is a picture of the worship life of Israel. They continually were sacrificing animals and grain on that altar. Not one of those sacrifices could take away their sins. But they were a picture of the One who would sacrifice himself to take away all sin -- God's own Son, Jesus. Our guilt it taken away; our sin is atoned for. Only the Holy God, Jesus Christ, could have done it for us. He has made us ready by showing us his grace.

And now you really see God's glory. You see his glory hidden in his grace. It is hidden because when a passerby looks on that horrible scene outside Jerusalem as Jesus' lifeblood is pouring out, he only sees a human being, even a good human being, tortured and killed for a crime he didn't commit. But when we see Jesus on that cross, we see the almighty, holy, eternal God, bending down to us sinful mortals, and touching our lips that have spoken awful things, and touching our hands that have done awful things, and touching even our hearts which have thoughts awful things, saying, "See, I have paid the price for your sin. Your sin is paid and atoned for. You are now holy in God's eyes." And that is how God works. He doesn't show us his glory in the mighty supernatural acts that he could do with a snap of his fingers. His glory is hidden in his grace, which Paul describes in Ephesians 2:6-7: "God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus." See that glory of God can only come through faith that God himself gives us. You and I have seen that glory as we witness God's love for us in his death on a cross, and we've rejoiced in that grace as we've seen him rise from the grave to assure us it's all true and our sins are forgiven.

Now we are ready. But what is God making us ready for? The same thing he was making Isaiah ready for -- to proclaim God's amazing grace to a sinful, dying world. Isaiah was ready now as God's prophet to tell people about the virgin who would be with child and give birth to Immanuel. He was ready to speak of that child who would be the Mighty God and the Prince of Peace. He was ready to proclaim that by his wounds we are healed. And you have seen all these things in Jesus. And you see him as your Savior which is the ultimate glory of God hidden in his grace.

Now you, too, are ready to proclaim God's glory in Jesus as you call sinners to repentance and point them to their Savior God. You probably have someone in mind right now that you need to proclaim that message to. Are you ready for it? You've seen God's miracle in your life. God has made your ready. So you can respond to God's glory hidden in his grace as Isaiah did: "Here am I. Send me."