Isaiah and Me

You have to love God's sense of irony. At least, I am coming to appreciate it more and more these days.

I'm thinking this morning of a particular prophet in the Old Testament, a man named Isaiah. Early in his career he saw God.

For real.

No lie.

Isaiah saw God. He writes, "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple." Now you have to understand, this is very, very unusual. You see, there was only man in all of Israel who might have had the opportunity to see God exalted on his throne in the temple. That would be the high priest who would enter the Most Holy Place, the "throne room" of God in the temple, once a year with a sacrifice for the sins of the people. No one else could enter this room. And even the high priest could only enter once a year and under strictly prescribed conditions.

Isaiah was not the high priest. The vision God gives Isaiah is a special invitation to an extraordinary appointment with the King of kings. While the way to God was closed to others, God opened it for Isaiah for a special purpose. God had a mission for this man.

And that's the irony. God called Isaiah into his Presence. God removed Isaiah's guilt and atoned for his sin, not requiring Isaiah to do these things for himself but graciously doing them for him. Then God poses the opportunity for Isaiah to take up as his own the Lord's purpose in the world. Isaiah writes, "I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?'"

Isaiah is ready. Isaiah is willing. Isaiah cries out, "Here am I. Send me." Can't you just imagine it? Isaiah is seeing God in a way few others ever had. He hears the voices of angels crying out "Glory!" and the voice of God calling out, "Who?" His soul has been relieved of the burden of guilt, and God himself has atoned for his sins. Can't you imagine the majesty, and glory, and freedom, and excitement, and eagerness of the moment? Can't you imagine the enthusiasm that must have swelled in Isaiah's heart to go and do whatever God asked of him? Can't you imagine how he might have thought what a wonderful life it would be to declare the perfections of this God, high and lifted up, Whose glory fills the temple? Can't you imagine how he might have projected that thousands would be overtaken by the glory of the vision God was giving him? Can't you imagine how that would have spurred his eagerness to put himself at God's disposal? Can't you just imagine?

Then God says, "Go, and say 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" (Isaiah 6:9-10). God sent Isaiah on a mission where apparent failure equalled success. That's irony. Intentional, divine, glorious irony.

Isaiah would preach and give his life to draw people to God and to his word, and their response would be to pull farther and farther away from God until such time as God judged his people and sent them into exile. Listen, there's no hint of a megachurch in Isaiah's mission statement, just the sad realization that the hearts of his audience were becoming so jaded in sin and selfishness that to them even the good news would be bad news.

The apostle Paul, writing what was probably his last letter to Timothy before being executed by the Roman government, describes a coming day of trouble and difficulty. "In the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying it power" (2 Timothy 3:1-5). How sad that, according to this last phrase, at least some of the people whom Paul describes will call themselves and be identified as Christians. They will have a form of godliness but it will be without any real spiritual, life changing power. They will be people of religion but have no relationship with the One they suppose to worship. Empty shells. Whitewashed tombs. Pharisees of a different color.

What are an Isaiah and a Timothy supposed to do? What is a Christian who loves the Lord and loves his word to do under these conditions where what men love most is themselves and not God and not his word? What are we to do when all our preaching and teaching and loving and living seems to have the opposite effect than what we projected? What are we to do when otherwise religious people look us in the eye and declare, "I don't care what the Bible says, I want things my way?"

Do what Isaiah did. Confronted with the challenge of sharing God's word with a society and a "church" that would not listen and heed the word of God, Isaiah preached and taught and lived and loved anyway. He did not ask for a different assignment. He did not ask for a change of venue, circumstance, or outcome. Isaiah simply asked, "How long?"

There was no question of whether or not he would agree to be sent by God, having already offered to go. He affirmed his faith-filled intent and asked only that God give him a time frame, a means for understanding God's intent for the days of his life. He did not argue with God, nor express disappointment, nor rail against the people, nor call down fire on the heads of his enemies. He simply asked, "Lord, is this a temporary or permanent assignment? When will I know I've done what you asked?"

If you face a sense of futility in your life today, if attempts to share the word of God with others seem miserably ineffective, if your best efforts at living for Jesus seem only to push people away rather than draw them near to Him, then consider Isaiah. His joy, his hope, his strength was not in a pleasant outcome, but in the fact that God himself had called him, cleansed him, and sent him. It was not the men, the ministry, or the moment that mattered, but the Master.

Take strength in the undeniable fact that God has fully revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and if you have seen Jesus, you have seen the Father in his glory. Take comfort in the certain knowledge that through faith in Jesus God has taken away your guilt and in Christ atoned for your sin. Take heart in the reality of the Holy Spirit living in and through you and his power to sustain your faith. Be bold in the now, as was Isaiah of old, because the message is True, the One who sent you fills the temple with his glory, and He sets both the time and the outcome.