The Result of a Radical Encounter Isaiah 6:1-13

In my have been reading I have recently discovered some wonderful and alarming statistics. Around the world, Christianity is growing at an unprecedented rate, especially in countries where believers are persecuted. What alarms me is that in our nation, where we are free to worship more and more people are moving away from the hope of gospel and the church as a whole.

Yet in light of that fact, I believe He has called us by name and He has chosen us to accomplish His will in this community and in this generation. So, have a question: how are we going to reach those around us with the gospel and radically influence the community that we are now living in? It will never be accomplished through social outreach or humanitarian effort, as important as those are; the needs are to great and the resources few. The answer is simply this; we must have a radical transformational, encounter with God.

Our passage from Isaiah is the classic text on that subject. Isaiah encountered the reality of God and the very foundation of his life was shaken to the core. Just like a powerful earthquake moves, shakes and disrupts the foundations and strata of the earth’s crust, Isaiah had a God-quake, that forever transformed the shape of his self-image and that led to a renovation of his world-view.

I believe that God has gathered us together here to make a redemptive difference, here and now. But if that is to become a reality, then it will demand we be brutally honest with ourselves before Jesus. We must come to terms with where we are spiritually, both individually and corporately. If we are to deeply affect this place we have been called to serve with the power of the gospel, we must first come to terms with our own need.

Let’s look at this together. The first thing that we need is to move from an idea, opinion or concept to God into real experience with God:

I. FROM CONCEPT TO A REALITY Isaiah 6:1–4 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!” 4 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

A. Isaiah enters the temple and is overwhelmed by this amazing sight. He is confronted by a vision of the throne and of God’s glory filling the house. 1. The word glory in this passage refers to the majestic beauty and splendor of God but it literally means; weight. 2. It means the permanent verses the illusory and ephemeral; it means the substantial and the important verses the unimportant and unessential, the real as opposed to the unreal. 3. When used in reference to God, glory means His weightiness, or His transcendent reality. When compared to everything else, God is the only thing that matters. 4. When God’s glory falls it displaces and crushes everything else, because He is heavier, weightier and He has more glory than all of creation.

B. When the reality of God comes into a life of a man or woman, it changes everything. Everything else must give way to Him and everything is reengineered, all the furniture of our lives is rearranged as we are overwhelmed by His glory. 1 1. When God came into Isaiah’s life, everything from that point onward would be different; and which is what we want to talk about this morning. 2. By the way, every time God’s glory comes down in the Bible there is an earthquake because His eternal glory is weightier than anything temporal. (Mt. Sinai Exodus 19; I the upper room on the day of Pentecost the room shook violently because God’s glory is the ultimate reality.) 3. Compared to the reality of God, nothing else has weight and when true the reality of God’s presence is manifest; everything else will be shaken.

C. This what I want to get across here; the difference between God as a Concept, and idea or opinion, and God as a Reality. The difference in believing in God, and truly having an experience with God, a touch of His glory. 1. When Isaiah walked into the temple and had this powerful encounter he didn’t say, “I knew it, there really is a God.” 2. He already believed, he knew God conceptually, but now He was a reality.

D. So what is the difference between having God as a concept and a reality? It is all a matter of glory. 1. A concept is lighter than we are. When God is just a concept He fits into to our lives and we shape Him into what we desire Him to be. If your experience with God has not radically changed your belief and value system, then more than likely He is just a concept and not a reality in your life. 2. But when God becomes a reality in our lives, when we truly experience the weight of His glory, He begins to shape us! 3. He moves us to His values, conforms us to His purpose and molds into His image. 4. There are many people who desire help to reaching their goals and figuring out the difficulties of their lives and so they shape a god of their own design. 5. The problem is, a god we create has all the same shortcomings and problems we have and certainly is not very powerful. 6. When we encounter the living God, the great I Am, everything in our lives is shaken and the only solid foundation is found at the foot of His Cross. 7. Our beliefs are changed, reordered and our priorities are brought into agreement with His word.

E. Every single person who has met the Lord Jesus knows the moment when God went from being a concept to a reality. Maybe your moment wasn’t exactly like Isaiah’s and that’s okay, but you know something has changed! 1. Remember the young prophet Jeremiah? He was filled with feelings of inferiority and doubt and when encountered God, the Lord told him to stop trembling and berating himself. 2. But when Isaiah, one of Israel’s proud elite, encountered the reality of God, He began to tremble and quake! 3. Jack Miller said, “Isaiah was going to temple just as he had a thousand times before and last person he expected to show up was God!” 4. For Isaiah, God was a concept until this moment, but now He has encountered His reality.

F. So let we must ask ourselves, “Have we had an encounter with God that has shaken us down to the core of our being? Has this encounter rearranged everything about me and the way I look at life?” 1. Does this God challenge your thinking and your motives and cause you to examine your heart in the light of His Holy word? 2. If not, then He might exist only as a good idea, and abstract concept, not a reality.

2 II. HOW CAN WE KNOW THAT WE KNOW? A. Isaiah shows us. God had become a reality and Isaiah had an encounter with radical beauty, radical humility and radical purity. Isaiah 6:5–8 So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because 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.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.” 8 Also 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.”

1. First, the experience of radical beauty. In verse three Isaiah has heard the seraphim cry out, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is filled with His glory! 2. In Hebrew the magnitude or importance of something is expressed by the repetition of a word. Gen. 14 it says the valley was full of asphalt pits, but the Hebrew says “pit, pits.” 2 Kings 25:15 says the fire pans and basins were made of solid gold, but in Hebrew it says they were made of gold, gold. 3. So doubling a word conveys magnitude or importance, but nowhere in the Bible except here, this is something trebled. God is not just Holy; He is Holy, Holy, Holy! That is, exponentially holy. Holy3!

B. What is holiness? qadosh means; infinitely unique and without equal above all others. To say “God’s wisdom is Holy wisdom, is to say that it is far an above all other wisdom; if His love is Holy love, then it is above and beyond all other loves. 1. Holiness also means brilliance and beauty. The Seraphim are not just saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, they are constantly calling out or singing and adoring His holiness. They are worshipping the unsurpassed beauty of His holiness. 2. Illustration: Let’s say you are the heir to a great fortune you’re your spouse marries you hoping to get their hands on your money, but when he/she realizes they cannot get the money they leave you. How would you feel? Violated, used, a means to an end, like an object not loved for yourself? Yet most people love God like that! How do you think He feels? 3. They were not serving God for who He is. They were serving for what they could get out of Him. They married Him for His money! 4. But the Seraphim… they worship God not because God pays off in terms of power, control, significance and security. They are serving Him because of the beauty of who He is! Not because its useful but because He is just beautiful! 5. Music illustration: we all enjoy good music. How many have particular music that just sends you? Its not productive, it’s just good and beautiful, in and of itself! 6. When we encounter the reality of God, that is how we will begin to worship Him; not because He will do anything for us, but because He is beautiful and we adore Him!

C. Isaiah has an experience of radical humility. In the presence of the incomparable holiness of God he becomes undone. Let me try and illustrate this. Just like when I went to audition for music LSU school of music as a self-taught guitarist/flutist I imagined myself to be quite good. When I was confronted with the level of proficiency of the others in the school I was humiliated that I could have denied my mediocrity to such a degree. I was traumatized… because I was average! 1. This is what happened to Isaiah. We know from Jewish history Isaiah was of the royal family; his father was the brother to the king. He was one of Israel’s elite, an artistic man of intellectual and oratory genius. (Think about it; how many other authors’ books are still being read and studied three thousand years after their death?)

3 2. This was an oral culture and he had the gift of communicating. At this time Israel was a mess. The king, Uzziah who had been stricken with leprosy has now died and the country was falling apart. I imagine that Isaiah was thinking that if he could only get into power he would fix it! 3. Whenever things go wrong and things always go wrong, its human nature is to think that it is always those people over there who are to blame. The fault is not our own. 4. Everybody thinks it the other person who is the unclean, unholy one, but Isaiah gets in the presence of God and realizes he’s the problem. 5. He is a man of unclean lips; even the best part of him is distorted, twisted and corrupt.

D. The experience of Radical Purity: Whenever people encounter God as a reality, they are confronted with their own sinfulness and depravity, but not without purpose…there is a way to redemption. 1. Job said, “I heard of you with my ear but now I have seen you with my eyes and I repent I dust and ashes” 2. Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” 3. Some of you might thinking, “Now wait a minute, this sounds like low self-esteem and I believe in a God of love.” 4. Ok, just think about comparing ourselves to a God who is nothing but love. We would still find ourselves unlovely, cruel and judgmental! 5. You know you are moving into the reality of God when you find yourself more sinful and more wicked than you could ever have imagined.

E. The minute Isaiah confesses his sin, the angel flies toward him with a coal of fire from off the altar. Interesting to note: fire in the OT is never a means of cleansing, it always speaks of God’s judgment and wrath. When the unholy came into the presence of the Holy, fire destroyed them. Isaiah thought in that moment he was a goner! We know it was the fire of God because even the angel had to use tongs to pick it up. 1. But the when the fire gets to his lips; the point of his confession, immediately he realizes he has been cleansed; it is a word of pardon, of redemption and not judgment! 2. Then he hears the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” 3. One second after Isaiah realized he didn’t deserve to live, that he was more wicked and flawed than he ever dared imagine, he is now more affirmed and valued, more loved and wanted than he ever dared hope. 4. This is incredible! He hears God saying I’ve got a little business going, saving the world and I need a new partner. 5. And without hearing the rest of the job description or the salary package Isaiah cries, “Here am I Lord send me!”

F. What has happened to Isaiah? His self-image has been destroyed and reconstructed in one instant by the touch of God. 1. He realized that he was more wicked than he dared believed yet more loved, and accepted by the grace of God. 2. In the past he thought he was good because he kept the rules, he did religion right, but now he knows that he is only righteous by the grace of God.

G. If we haven’t experienced the grace of God then we are still trying to live up to a standard of performance that can never be achieved. If His grace has become our reality, then there is a stability and balance nothing else can bring to your life.

4 1. When we fail, we hear the affirmation of God by grace and we know you are loved, accepted and forgiven. When we succeed, we are not proud because we remember we were all sinners who have been saved by His grace. 2. We can be bold and humble at the same time. Bold because we are forgiven, humbled because we are lost without His favor and grace. 3. You can handle anything that comes you way to the degree that God is a reality in your life.

H. So how could this happen; how could the fire of God become an agent for cleansing? Did you know that centuries later almost the same thing happened? The temple was shaken, so much so the veil was torn and rocks broke open. Matthew 27:45–48 Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” 1. Jesus cried out, just as Isaiah had done, but no angel came to atone for His sins. Why? because He as the sacrifice for ours. Jesus was shaken to the depths so that you and I could be unshakeable.

2. He was broken and crushed so we could be transformed by the glory of God coming down into our lives to restore and renew us. So we would worship Him for who He is, and not what He has done.

III. TO BECOME AN AGENT OF MISSION Isaiah 6:12-13 The Lord has removed men far away, And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. 13 But yet a tenth will be in it, And will return and be for consuming, As a terebinth tree or as an oak, Whose stump remains when it is cut down. So the holy seed shall be its stump.”

A. As God truly becomes a reality in our lives, radical change will take place. All we are, in and of our selves will be over shadowed by His presence and we will become agents of change and mission in this earth. But there are three things we will need if we are to become useful in His hands. They are: 1. Available a. The reality of God has caused Isaiah’s personal needs, comfort and safety to be secondary to participation in the mission of God. b. When God is just a concept, we want Him to be available to serve us. When He truly is a reality, we make ourselves available to serve Him and willing to risk everything! c. That must become an inescapable principle in our lives. God doesn’t send movements or ministries; He sends men. “Here am I…”

2. Dependable a. Isaiah agrees to go knowing the people he is being sent to will not receive him. They will reject him and despise him but he goes anyway. b. His needs are not what he has placed in the forefront; he has placed God’s purpose first and has committed himself to be available and dependable. c. Think about this, what if we made our plans around serving Him instead of fitting Him into our schedule? d. What if we truly become dependable and ordered our lives around His desires and not our own? e. Our weakness and infirmities break not the bond of our duty.

3. Expectant 5 a. There is a seed in the stump. When God becomes a reality in our lives there is always hope! b. We can work with the knowledge that everything around us in this sad broken world will be healed. It will be restored and made whole in the glory of His new heaven and new earth. c. God tells the prophet the seed of the future is already there. It is alive and it will grow and become what He has promised.

Conclusion The question before us this morning is: Do we have a concept of God that fits our ideas and opinions of Him, or do we truly know the reality of who God is? Do we have a “little g” god, made in our image or have we encountered the omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe?

Let me close with an illustration that will hopefully enlarge out concept of just how big and powerful our God truly is. Slide: Earth & Sun. The distance between the earth and the sun is 92 million miles. Slide: Stick man. If that were equal to the thickness of this sheet of paper, then the distance to the nearest star in our galaxy Slide: Promixa Centauri 4.2 light years from earth, would equal a stack of paper 70 feet high.

So the distance across our galaxy would equal a stack of paper 310 miles high (1,636,800 ft) and the Hubble telescope tells us our galaxy is one of a 100 billion, a speck of dust in the universe.

The scripture tells us the universe was spoken into existence by God, Hebrews 11:3 “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God” and are held together by the Word of His power.

So, how can we ask Jesus Christ, who is declared by the creator to be King of Kings and Lord of all, to come into our lives and be our assistant.

We need to recognize the reality, the weight of the glory of our God, cry out for His mercy and allow the preserving, protecting power of His grace to become our reality, bringing healing to our broken and weary lives.

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