Good morning. Good to see you here this morning.
I need to begin-you can be turning to Isaiah
chapter 6 if you decide to stay-but I need to
begin with some clarifications about schedule and
topics because you may think we are doing
something in here that we are in fact not doing.
In the booklet, there is actually a conflict
regarding this hour. It says in one place that
I'm doing a second hour on prophets and worship
renewal, and it says in another place that I'm
doing the first of two classes on when God
calls, and it's the second that is correct.
I've said everything I have to say about
prophets and worship renewal yesterday,
and if I say any more it's just going to go
worse. So anyway, that's observation number one.
So if you need to get up and go because you're
supposed to be in something else,
please don't hesitate to do that. So that's
clarification number one.
Clarification number two. We'll see if this
hits anybody. I am drawing from the book that I wrote
and just came out a few weeks ago, the When God
Calls book this morning, and so if you have
already read that book, please don't stay in
here because you're going to be bored out of
your skull
because I'm just doing stuff. Frankly, once I
have one thought, there's not another thought there,
so it's not getting any better. I wish it was,
but it's not getting any better. So anyway,
we're going to be working on that. Or if you've
heard me in the last couple of years,
as I was working on this material in different
places before I wrote it,
it hasn't gotten any better anyway. If you're
still interested then,
and I'll say this one time and then this is
kind of awkward for me, if you're interested,
if you are interested in this and you're
interested in a book, ACU Press, not ACU Press,
ACU Bookstore has that. I'll be there over
there at noon doing book signings. Never done
that before.
And Abilene Educational Supply has them too, if
you're interested in that.
Isaiah 6. Enough of that. And let's start with
prayer. What a privilege it is, Lord,
to open the Word and to read it together in
such a wonderful place. I ask your blessing
upon each
of us today, on me as I speak, that I'll have
just the right words to convey your message and
that I'll get that right this time. And on each
who will hear that something good from your spirit
will happen in the process, will be encouraged,
will be challenged, and will be blessed by your
Word. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Isaiah 6. I
want to read the first eight verses.
In the year that King Isaiah died, I saw the
Lord sitting on a throne,
high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled
the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him,
each had six wings. With two they covered their
faces, and with two they covered their feet,
and with two they flew. And one called to
another and said,
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. The
whole earth is full of his glory.
The pivots on the threshold shook at the voices
of those who called, and the house filled with
smoke. And I said, Woe is me, I am lost. I'm a
man of unclean lips, and I live among a people
of unclean lips, and yet my eyes have seen the
King, the Lord of Hosts. Then one of the seraphs
flew to me, holding a live coal that had been
taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.
The seraph touched my mouth with it and said,
Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt
is departed, and your sin is blotted out. And
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.
This is a calling story or a call narrative, if
you wish. And if you'll just race through this
with me, we'll do this together. There are a
number of stories in both Old Testament and New
Testament that are very similar to this, in
which God calls somebody to some kind of
special work or
service. Now quickly, let's shout them out.
What other call narratives can you immediately think
of? Moses. Oh, that's a big long one. Yeah.
Another? Abraham and Sarah.
Abraham and Sarah. Absolutely. Another? Ezekiel.
Whatever was going on with Ezekiel and whatever
he saw or ate or smoked. Okay. Yeah. Ezekiel.
What else? Paul. Yeah. On the road to Damascus.
Definitely a call narrative. Others? Jeremiah.
Yeah. Jeremiah 1. Others? Yeah. Samuel
has a call and, you know, has trouble figuring
out, you know, who's calling in the middle of
the night. Others? Mary. Yes. In Luke 1, Mary
and Zechariah have call narratives that are
placed back to back and quite interesting to
compare those to. You're all over this. There
are a lot of these call narratives in
Scripture, and they take on a particular form
that we'll
actually talk about tomorrow in tomorrow's
class, what that form is and maybe some ideas about
reading that particular form. But we're very
familiar with these stories. These are not
exactly obscure stories, right? I mean, we know
about Moses at the burning bush. We know about
Abraham and Sarah. Paul on the road to Damascus.
It's hard to miss that one because the book of
Acts tells it, you know, three times. These are
not obscure stories. We know these stories.
And yet, on the other hand, this is my
experience, my observation. You check it
against yours.
While we know the stories well, I think we've
been a little bit, if not a whole lot, uncertain
about what to do with the central idea in each
one of these stories about calling. And we can
re-talk, we can talk about Moses and his
experience and Paul and his experience. But
when it comes to
talking about the idea of calling, we're not as
sure what to do with these stories. I think we're
I think we're torn in two different directions.
Let me try to set this up and we're going to work
with this a good bit this morning to get our
placement right. But I think we're torn in two
directions. On the one side, in Churches of
Christ, in the restoration movement, we have
had a
hesitancy to talk about or deal with, except,
if you will, an idea of calling.
The best way I know to talk about this is talk
about my father-in-law. My father-in-law,
Harvey Strickland, also goes by the name of
Red, grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi, which is right
down there, right through where Hurricane
Katrina came through. So, I mean, really did a
lot of
damage down there. He grew up in Gulfport in a
church-going family, but not a Church of Christ.
So it was a different church tradition that he
was going to until he graduated from college.
Until he graduated from high school, joined the
Air Force, and literally some years later,
almost literally landed in Midland, Texas, and
among the Churches of Christ. And so he raised
his family, including my wife and her sister,
in Midland, while all of the home family is
back in
Gulfport, Mississippi. Now, some of you have
been there, done that. If you are raising your family
in Midland, Texas, and the rest of your
extended family lives in Gulfport, Mississippi,
that can
mean only one thing is going to happen during
the year. Pilgrimage, right? Once a year,
you're going
to make the long drive from Midland to
Gulfport, and when you get there, because it is
such a long
drive, you're not going to just stay for a day
or two, hop back in the car and go back home. You're
going to stay there for an extended time,
including a weekend. I'm going somewhere with
this. So the
practice of the family was go spend time over a
weekend, and that's what they did. And one
particular year, when Harvey and his wife,
Verla, and the girls got to the little church
there just
outside of Gulfport while the family went to
their church, Harvey faced a crisis that probably
only folks like us in this room could really
appreciate. He was the only male present, and he
was a visitor. Now, what are you going to do?
Well, what Harvey proceeded to do is probably what,
you know, in late 1960s, you know, things have
changed in some places, but not in Gulfport,
Mississippi in the late 1960s. And so Harvey
proceeded to teach the Bible class, and then
after the Bible class was over, assembly time
comes around. Harvey, you know, reads the scripture.
He tries to lead the singing, which is
admittedly not his calling. I guess he makes
the announcements.
I don't know how a visitor does that. And he
also preached the sermon that morning. Now, my
wife was
a young girl, and so was her sister at that
time. And immediately after the service was over,
the two young girls go running back to
grandma's house, very excited, proclaiming,
daddy preach, daddy preached, which got the
attention of Harvey's brother,
who was a lay ordained pastor in the local
family church, and who immediately asked him
the question,
Harvey, I didn't know. When did you receive
your call? To which my father-in-law replied,
when I got to the church building and they
asked me. Uncle Donald, I believe that was his name,
was not impressed with that answer. And so he
began to tell Harvey his own experience of his calling.
And it went something like, on a Saturday
night, when he was drawing up his Saturday
night Bathwater,
leaning over the tub to put the stopper in the
tub, God called him. To which my father-in-law said,
sounds like to me you just pulled a muscle. You
got to know my father-in-law.
Okay, I think it's fair to say that that kind
of thought or reflex action to the concept of calling
is pretty common among churches of Christ. I
mean, it's pretty common, at least in my generation.
That's been pretty common. And we come by that
honestly. Some of our DNA in the restoration
movement is really ingrained with this reaction
because Campbell, at least, was reacting against
a couple of ideas regarding calling. One, for
example, was the Calvinistic idea of calling
where you might hear the gospel proclaimed and
you might be convicted by the gospel and you might
want to become a Christian and be saved, but
you were powerless to do that on your own. What you
had to do was come down to the mourner's bench
and sit on the mourner's bench day after day,
night after night, until you had an experience
of calling. And then you would know that you
are one
of the elect, but before that you have no idea
you're lost. And Campbell was reacting against
that, you see, the idea of waiting for a
personal call from God. Campbell says that's
crazy. God has
called all people to salvation, and so he's
reacting against that. But he's also, Campbell
was reacting against a second idea of calling,
and that has to do with the whole pastor calling
system or clergy. And you know a little bit,
you know anything about restoration movement,
you know, that was a big point of Campbell's,
is that all Christians are priests. All Christians
are ministers, and there should not be a
pastor-clergy kind of system. And especially
what he
saw was going on is in his day, whenever a
person was called to be a pastor or to be
ordained as a
part of that ceremony, they would have to
recount their personal experience of God
calling them to
ministry before they would be ordained. So you
see, Campbell's reacting to both of those things,
and that's in our heritage, and that's kind of
part of the DNA that's been passed down to us.
So that we're very reluctant in many respects
to talk about any idea of a personal calling.
Now we got to look at some text to kind of back
up some of this. Go to 1 Corinthians 7.
Now hold a finger in Isaiah 6, we're coming
back. But 1 Corinthians 7,
so that we don't misunderstand or misinterpret
this side of the tension,
it's not at all that we would say, God does not
call people. That's not at all what we would say.
But what we would say is that in the New Testament,
Paul and others emphasized that God calls all
people. So everyone is called and everyone is
called to salvation. And certainly that's true.
I mean, think about Acts 2:38 and 39.
In verse 39, Peter says, the promise is for you
and those to come after you, your children,
all those whom God has called or God calls.
Well, clearly God calls people.
In 1 Corinthians 7, beginning in verse 17, this
obviously just jumps off the page.
1 Corinthians 7:17, however that may be, let
each of you lead the life
that the Lord has assigned to which God called
you. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone
at the time of his call already circumcised?
Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision.
Was anyone at the time of his call
uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision.
Circumcision is nothing, uncircumcision is
nothing, but obeying the commandments of God is everything.
Let each of you remain in the condition in
which you were called, referring to the call of salvation.
It keeps going, verse 21. Were you a slave when
called? Do not be concerned about it.
Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of
your present condition now more than ever.
For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave
is a freed person belonging to the Lord,
just as whoever was free when called is a slave
of Christ. You are bought with a price,
do not become slaves of human masters. In
whatever condition you were called,
brothers and sisters, there remain with God.
See, I mean, we're not about to deny that God calls
people, but here clearly the calling that God
is talking about, or Paul is talking about,
is that we are all called by God to salvation.
And there is a moment of a moment
of salvation. And there is a moment of that
calling. Okay. And look at Acts 16. While we're
still talking about this side of the tension,
some reluctance, we're also not about to deny
that God has called certain individuals in
special ways in the past.
And a good example of this is in Acts 16, this
whole Macedonian call thing where Paul has
a vision of the Macedonian guy calling him
over, come and help us in verse 9. He has that vision.
And look at verse 10. In verse 10, when he had
seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross
over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had
called us to proclaim the Good news to them.
To proclaim the Good news to them. So while we
have, at least this one side, has a reluctance
to talk about calling and to name calling,
certainly we're not going to deny that God has
called people or that God has called
individuals in the past like Paul or Moses or
any of the people
that we have named. But our DNA causes us to be
somewhat reluctant to claim that for ourselves.
You know, it seems just a little bit arrogant
to put myself on par with Paul. I've been
called to,
you know. It seems just a little bit
presumptuous to state that God has called me to
a certain
thing. I mean, just, so we have that hesitancy.
Okay, that's on one side, this hesitancy,
reluctance. On the other hand, I am sensing,
and I think I've got this right, but you check this
right, but you check it against your experience.
I'm sensing a groundswell in the past years
of interest in the concept or idea of calling.
Named that. Let me give you a couple of examples.
One, as chair of the department, I get to sit
down with between 40 and 50 prospective students
every year who come in for campus visits. We
sit across the table from each other.
And one of the questions I will somehow ask
them during the course of that conversation is,
what do you want to do? What is it you're
really interested in? And I'd say nine times
out of 10
these days, the student or prospective student
will respond with the words,
God has called me to, and then you fill in the
blank. Now, when I was a student here,
25 years ago, Ken, 25 years ago, you didn't
hear that language.
You didn't hear people talking about God has
called me to do this. You would hear people talking
about I want to preach or I'm interested in
doing this or, you know, I'm trying to figure
out what
God would want me to do. But you didn't hear
the language of calling. Not like that. The second
illustration that I think leads us this
direction is a song that we're not going to try
to sing
because I couldn't lead it. But there's a song
that our students really, really like on campus.
There's a stirring song. You're familiar with
that? Now, I'm going to make sure I get my
words right
and I'm not going to sing it to you, but let me
read those words to you aloud and then talk
about them for just a second and what's going
on with this song. It starts with, there's a stirring
deep within me. Could it be my time has come
when I see my gracious Savior face to face when
all is
done? Is that His voice I am hearing? Come
away, my precious one. Is He calling me? And
then repeated,
is He calling me? And then you know the chorus.
I mean, this is a majestic song, and if you're
from out of town, it's your loss that you don't
get to hear that with 4,000 undergraduate students
singing in chapel. You know, it's a beautiful
song. My problem with the song is my academic
training is in historical critical exegesis,
which means everything I read and everything I sing
I sing, I want to know what did the author mean
when they wrote it. Right, Zach? I want to know
what the author meant when they wrote it
because that's the meaning of the text. And
when I sing
this song, it's depressing because this author
clearly, historical exegesis reveals, was thinking
about death or the rapture, perhaps, most
likely. But in any event, I mean, think about
the words.
Could it be that my time has come? My time to
do what? My time to die. And when all, you know,
see my gracious Savior face to face when all is
done. I mean, the song is talking about dying or
rapture or something like that. And then when I
die, I'll rise up and all that. And so is he calling
me is asking the question, is it my time to die?
Isn't that morbid? I mean, think about it. I mean,
is he calling me? We just get really, am I
about to die? Okay. But my students don't think about
that. I don't think at all when they sing that
song. They're doing what we call reader response
criticism. In other words, just take it and go
with it. And that's okay. And what they're doing
is seizing upon that last couple of phrases. Is
he calling me? And I'm convinced
what they want to know when they're singing
that song is, is God calling me now to something?
Not death, but to something. And if God is
calling me, I want to know about that. How do I
know that?
And how am I going to fulfill what God's
calling is upon my life? I mean, I think that's
what the
students and many people when they're singing
that song are thinking about. And so there's a
different interest level about calling that's
going on here. Yeah, rise up and serve. And if
you do a
little bit, and I've done this, you can look at
it if you want to. When this thing gets translated
into other languages these days and then you
back translate it, that becomes very clear that that's
what people are thinking. It's about calling
now. Now let me talk a little bit more about more
tensions that are going on here and then
suggest to you a way that we might work through
some of
these and then try to illustrate a little bit
of it with the time that we have left.
It's interesting that we have this tension
going on, and it's also evident in churches,
because most churches that I have worked with
don't typically use the language of calling
that God
has called us to do something, and yet we act
like it. For example, a church may not use that
language, and yet a church will engage in a
period of prayer and discernment regarding a particular
ministry that we're thinking about starting, or
a particular mission effort that we're thinking
about supporting. And we may never use the word
calling, and yet by the time we get to the end of
that process, we are most certainly acting like
God has called us, we've discerned God's call
to do
a certain thing. Same thing with minister
selections. It's interesting that we have
minister selections. It's interesting because I
do a lot of fill-in work for transition churches
in transition that are in between ministers for
one reason or another, and it's interesting to
look at the language in the bulletin and in the
announcements about discerning who God is calling
or sending to us, but they don't use the word
call. But certainly we're looking for that because
obviously churches are wanting more than a
minister who's looking just for a larger congregation
or a bigger salary or a nicer location. I mean
we're hoping that our ministers, our preachers,
have some sense of calling even though we may
not ever talk about it in those words. Why are you
moving here? Well, because God called me. It's
a tension. I've also found that to be true
on the individual level, not just about
preachers, that we are talking more and more about,
you know, having deep passions about ministries
or professions. We may or may not use the word
calling, but it's there. I rather suspect, go
back to Isaiah 6, that for most of us,
we may not be too terribly sure what God's
call, if we want to put it in those terms,
what God's call upon my life is right now. We
may not be too sure about that. There are probably
some in the room who could say with some
confidence, I'm pretty sure that I know what
God's call is on my life. It's always easier to
see that in hindsight, but I'm pretty sure I know
what God's call is on my life. I think the rest
of us frankly probably fall more into the category
of Isaiah in Isaiah 6, and that's what I want
to work on for a few minutes.
Isaiah 6, like most call narratives or call
stories, begins with a crisis. There's always
a crisis in the background. In Isaiah 6, it's
real easy to miss what that crisis is.
He begins with the statement, Isaiah 6 and
verse 1, in the year that King Aziah died, and
it's really easy to read over that and just not
even see what the crisis is, but that's indicating
to us a crisis because Aziah was one of the
longest reigned kings in South Judah, and his
reign was a
very prosperous time for South Judah. In other
words, there were good times. Now it's true that
Aziah had some personal lapses in the temple,
and as a result had leprosy, and his son had to be
co-regent or co-reign with him because of that,
but even so, the reign of Aziah is a high mark
for South Judah. Things are good, and then
Aziah dies. And about the time that Aziah dies, there
are rumblings towards the north, some political
uncertainty about what's going to happen next.
It's a period of crisis for the nation. Even
more, even more. Have you ever noticed that the
call of
Isaiah comes in Isaiah 6? Isn't that odd? Why
do you put that call of Isaiah
in Isaiah 6 instead of like Jeremiah in
Jeremiah 1? I'll give you my best
theory on that. It's because the first five
chapters of Isaiah are telling us what the crisis
is for his call. And again, we'll talk more
about that tomorrow, but Isaiah 1-5 are
setting up for us the crisis into which Isaiah
is called. And we read some of this yesterday,
if you were with us, beginning in chapter 1,
the crisis of the worshiping the wrong object
and how their lives are being shaped by that
and how God is infuriated with it and will not
put up
with their worship any longer to him just
because they think they do a good job at worship.
And then this climax is, look at the end of
chapter 5, the description of the crisis,
the moral crisis, comes to a conclusion in
Isaiah 5. Let's start in verse
24 just to pick up a sense of it. Therefore, as
the tongue of fire devours the stubble
and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so
their root will become rotten and their blossom
go up
like dust. For they have rejected the
instruction of the Lord of Hosts and have
despised the word
of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore, the anger
of the Lord was kindled against his people,
and he stretched out his hand against them and
struck them. The mountains quaked. Their corpses
were like refuse in the streets. For all this,
his anger has not turned away and his hand is still
stretched out, just ready to come down on him.
He will raise a signal for a nation far away and
whistle for a people at the ends of the earth.
Here they come swiftly, speedily. We got a crisis
on our hands. We had a real problem, and people
in Scripture are always called into some moment
of crisis, significant moment of crisis, and
Isaiah's got his. What happens next is God gets
his attention, and you'll notice in all of the
call narratives, God always gets somebody's
attention by doing something. Whatever it
takes, God will get their attention. In this case,
it's a vision. And the vision, I think it is
fair to say, is overwhelming to Isaiah. You've worked
through this text, so play along with me on
this as we think about it. To begin with,
Isaiah is
overwhelmed in this vision, in this text, by
the holiness, or as Fred would say from yesterday's
lecture, the awesomeness of God. He sees God
enthroned. That's worth a pause. You remember,
everybody's concerned because Isaiah the king
has just died, and what are we going to do
about a
king? And Isaiah's vision immediately puts the
record straight. The king of Judah is not dead.
The king of Judah is seated on a throne. Thank
you very much, right? Seated on a throne high and
lofty, and his garment is filling the temple
area, and around the Lord are these three, these
angelic creatures, fearsome. I mean, they're
cherubim, or they're seraphs, and they've got
wings, and with two of their wings, they're
flying, and with two of their wings, they're hiding
their face from the awesomeness of God, thus
they die on the spot, and with two of their wings,
they're covering themselves, probably a
reference to modesty here. At least, that's
what my Greek
teacher taught me, that this is what he's
sitting on the front row. The feet probably are
a reference
to modesty in this case, and all that these
creatures can say in the presence of this God
is, holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts. The
whole earth is full of his glory. I think Isaiah
is properly blown away by a vision of God,
awesomeness of God, the incredibleness of God.
And then, as you continue reading in the text,
the pivots are shaking, the whole temple is filling
with smoke, and Isaiah cries out, because now
not only is Isaiah overwhelmed by the presence
of God,
Isaiah is overwhelmed by a presence of his own
self. Isaiah cries out in verse 5, basically,
I am dead. I am so dead. Woe is me. That's
death language, because I've seen the Lord of Hosts.
I'm overwhelmed by a sense of the Lord's
holiness, and now, as we've said before, I can
see me
correctly. Now that I see the true standard of
comparison for what holiness looks like, and I
think about my own life, I'm dead. I am so dead.
And not only am I dead, I'm a man of unclean lips,
I'm sinful, I see that, but my whole
generation, the whole society in which I live,
I see now is
also dead. I live among a people of unclean
lips, I'm a man of unclean
lips, Isaiah is also dead. I live among a
people of unclean lips. Isaiah is overwhelmed
by this
vision of the holy God, and Isaiah, at the very
same time, is overwhelmed by a sense of his own
sinfulness. Now, if that was the end of the
call narrative, we wouldn't have much of a call,
because so far all we've got is a sense of
great guilt in the presence of God. And so the third
thing that happens in this call narrative, this
story, is God, we've already read it, dispatches
one of those angelic beings to take a hot
burning coal off of the altar and bring it over
and put it
right on Isaiah's lips. And think, that's weird.
It is to us, but for the ancient Near Eastern mind
and understanding, that is an image of
purification and forgiveness. So that now
Isaiah is not only
going to be overwhelmed by a sense of who God
is and God's awesomeness and his own sinfulness,
because I am so unclean, but now Isaiah is
going to be overwhelmed with a sense of what
God has
done in my life. He's forgiven me. He's saved
me from what I was, made me whole and pure.
So now, overwhelmed in all of those ways, when
God deliberates with the host, with the divine
court, and says, what are we going to do about
Judah? We need to send somebody to Judah. Who's
going to go in verse 8? Isaiah, overwhelmed as
he is, immediately jumps up like the little kid in
the back of the room jumping up and down and
holding his hand in the third grade. Pick me,
pick me, pick me. And it's not because he's
been searching for significance. And it's not because
he's been out looking for a call from God. He
hasn't been doing either one of those. The reason
he does that is because he's so overwhelmed
with who God is and who he is and what God's
done in
his life that when God says, hey, I need
somebody to do something, Isaiah jumps up and says,
I'll do it. And notice in the text, at least as
we just read through chapter 6 without any looking
ahead, Isaiah doesn't even know what the call
is. You see that? All God's saying is we need somebody
to do something. We need somebody to go. And
he's not really given any indication of what that's
going to involve or what the person is going to
have to do or what the person is going to have to
say. None of that is there. It's just, Isaiah
says, it doesn't matter. Whatever God needs me
to do,
I'm ready to do it because of all of this other
stuff. You see, that's why I said earlier that
many of us may be much more like Isaiah than
other folks. We may not know, you may not know,
you may not know exactly what it is that God is
calling you to, like some people that you
encounter that are so certain about that. But
what we do know is who God is and who we are
and what God has done in our lives so that just
like Isaiah, it really doesn't matter
what that specific call is going to be because
we have the attitude like Isaiah that says,
whatever it is, here I am. Send me. I'll do
whatever you need because I get it.
And if you're somewhere along those lines with
Isaiah this morning, that's great. But you've
also just been caught because now after Isaiah
has said, pick me, God tells him what it's
going to
involve. Let's pick up reading in verse 9. Then
he said, go say to this people,
keep listening, but do not comprehend. Keep
looking, but do not understand.
Make the mind of this people dull and stop
their ears, shut their eyes, so that they may
not look
with their eyes and listen with their ears and
comprehend with their minds and turn and be healed.
Are you kidding? Depending on your translation,
right? Are you kidding? I remember teaching this
in a summer class a couple of years ago. Just a
few students in the class, we read this text.
I had an international student sitting right
here Front row, good student, wonderful young lady.
We read that text and she looked up with the
most puzzled look on her face and said, that
can't be
right. God is asking Isaiah to go preach in
such a way that people don't understand him,
that people's minds are dull out of their
senses, their ears are clogged up, and they
fall asleep.
Well, I can do that. That's a good calling for
me. I mean, matches talents.
But you can't be serious about that. Of course,
there's a variety of ways we can read this
particular text and translate it. For example,
we could read this as, what I want you to do,
Isaiah, is go bring this whole thing to a head.
Make it worse so that it can come to a climactic
crisis event so that then we can get the bad
stuff over and then we can begin the process of healing.
We can read it in that way. Or we could read it
as sarcasm. How do you get a stubborn person to do
something? Somebody's really stubborn, how do
you get them to do something? You tell them,
don't do
it. And if you tell them not to do it, then
they'll do it because they're so stubborn.
Maybe that's
what's going to happen to them. They're not
going to do it because they're so stubborn.
Maybe that's what's going on with this text. If
you tell them not to listen, then they'll listen.
If you tell them not to understand, then
they'll try to understand. You know, if you
tell them that,
so maybe it's some sarcasm. Or maybe this is
just the result of what his ministry is going
to be.
Instead of translating this as, go make their
minds dull and put them to sleep,
maybe the way we should understand this is this
is what's going to happen as a result of your
ministry. We know it going in. It's not what we
want to happen, but this is what's going to happen.
Or maybe he's simply saying, I want you to go
preach, but I want you also to know
that God's already decided what's going to
happen here. It's a hopeless, hopeless ministry.
And you can take your pick from any one of
those. And there's arguments on all sides of that.
Take your pick of any of those, but you still
end up in the same place.
And that is, I think, with Isaiah saying to
himself, what in the world was I thinking
when I volunteered for this? I always get ahead
of myself. I should have waited and listened
and heard what it was that God was asking
somebody to do before I jumped in there.
So Isaiah responds in verse 11 with a question.
Now, in the pattern of a form, the form of a call
narrative, which again, we'll talk more about
that tomorrow, this may be the objection.
Isaiah says, how long, O Lord? Now, on the one
hand, how long in poetic text, a sentence,
especially the book of Psalms, usually is a
basic objection. It's not really asking for time,
right? It's like if you are in the middle of a
sermon, listening to it, and you nudge the person
next to you and ask the question, how long? The
point is not how much longer. The point is it's
already gone too long, right? Okay, so that
could be what's going on, or in view of God,
it could be that he's really asking, how long
am I supposed to do this? And the Lord responds,
verse 11. He said, until cities lie waste
without inhabitant, and houses without people,
and the land is utterly desolate, until the
Lord sends everyone far away and vast as the
emptiness in the midst of the land, even if a
tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again,
like a tarabinth or an oak whose stump remains
standing when it is felled, the holy seed is its
stump. You're going to keep at it until it's
all gone, all gone except for just a small percentage.
Isaiah only thought he wanted to be called by
God, but not to this. How in the world
are you supposed to do this? See, I think most
of us, when we think of God's calling,
at least me, typically think of something
that's going to be glamorous. God's going to
call me to
change the world. I want to make a real impact.
The people are going to love me because God has
called me to this, but not because I'm going to
change the world. I'm going to make a real impact.
The people are going to love me because God has
called me to this, but not this.
I thought I was signing up for that, and now
that you're telling me what this ministry is really
going to be about, how in the world am I
supposed to do that? Now, I don't know with
this group
if that resonates with you or not, but I
suspect for some it does. For some of my former students
who, when we first met years ago and we talked
about their calling, were so confident and eager
and looking forward to a great ministry, and
now this is what it's like. And I don't understand
that, or how I'm going to make it through that.
Or it's not just about ministers and ministry,
it's about fundamental faithfulness to God, and
whatever it is God is placing upon our lives
through which to live and minister and serve.
And I have a friend who, things go on wonderfully,
you know, doing great ministry, involved in
supporting and teaching and academics and all
of that, and lose their health, and nothing
will fix that. How do you live out that call
when it doesn't get better? See, I think many
of us can find ourselves in Isaiah's life. We've
caught a glimpse of the holiness of God. We did
that. We were overwhelmed by that. We were
overwhelmed by our own sinfulness, eagerly
ready to be a part of whatever God's plan is, and
now it's so fruitless, and it's difficult.
Would you turn to Revelation 4?
You've already been thinking about this text.
I'm sure of it.
John's got his own crisis going in the early
chapters of Revelation. You remember it?
He wrote the letters to those churches, and
he's indicated that one big problem that they're
facing is going to be persecution. They're
already facing it, and it's coming down the tracks,
and it's going to mow them over. It may be even
of greater concern to John in those over the
chapters. A bigger crisis for the church than
the persecution is complacency because a lot of the
churches are just becoming complacent and bland
and unfaithful. There's a crisis. How in the world
is somebody like John, who has such a passion
for these churches, going to remain faithful to the
call that God has put on them? How is that
going to change the world? How is that going to change
how people are going to be faithful to the call
that God has put on his life? How are those
churches going to be faithful to the call that
God's putting on their lives? Isn't it something?
Revelation 4, beginning in verse 1. After this
I looked, and there in Heaven a door stood
open. And the first voice, which I had heard
speaking to me like a trumpet, said, Come up
here, and I'll show you what must take place
after this. At once I was in the Spirit, and
there in
Heaven, seated on the throne. And the one
seated there looks like Jasper and Cornelian,
and around
the throne there's a rainbow that looks like an
emerald. Boy, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?
And if you drop down to verse 8,
And four living creatures, each of them with
six wings are full of eyes all around and inside.
Day and night without ceasing they sing, Holy,
Holy, Holy, the Lord God, the Almighty, who was
and is and is to come. And whenever the living
creatures give glory and honor and thanks to the
one who is seated on the throne who lives
forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall
down before
the one who's seated on the throne and worship
the one who lives forever and ever. They cast
their crowns before the throne singing, You're
worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and
honor and power, for you created all things,
and by your will they existed and were created.
I tell you the truth, I don't know how some
folks do it.
How they remain faithful to a calling upon
their life, whatever that situation like 1 Corinthians
chapter 7 talks about, how they remain faithful
to the Lord walking through that calling with
everything that's going on. I think about
friends, you think about friends who have sold
the farm
and moved all over the world to do ministry. We
think about friends who are living through
difficult circumstances. How do we stay with
the call? Would you please just listen? Close your
Bibles if you wish, close your eyes if you wish.
But to two different people, two different time
periods and cultures who were both struggling
with a call that they didn't particularly like,
I don't think. And Isaiah certainly didn't
realize what he was getting into and how in the
world am
I going to be faithful to that now. Here's what
God showed him, and I think what Isaiah played
over in his mind over and over again. I saw the
Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty,
high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled
the temple. With seraphs in attendance above him,
with six wings, two they covered their faces,
two they covered their feet, and with two they flew,
and one called to another saying, Holy, Holy,
Holy is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is
full of
his glory. The pivots on the threshold shook at
the voices of those who called, and the house filled
with smoke. You see, it's what called Isaiah in
the first place that enables Isaiah to be faithful
to that call the rest of his life. That vision
of God, the reality of who I am before God,
and what God has done in my life. Let's pray together.
Lord, we just lift up the myriad of thoughts
that are racing through our minds right now
about our own lives and our own calling, our
own situation before you, and where you've
placed us
to be faithful, to live out your call and
friends that we're thinking about. And Lord, we
just ask
this morning that you would help us be like
Isaiah in responding ready to do whatever it is
that you
put in front of us and letting you take care of
that. But now for us, especially, that you would
grant us the blessing of seeing again who you
are, what you've done in our lives, that we can find
strength in you to remain faithful to our calls.
That's our one request this morning. In Jesus'
name, amen.