The call and commissioning of Disciples of Christ. Preached Sunday 23rd April 2006. 10.30
In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Hovering around him were mighty seraphim, each with six wings. With two they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with the remaining two they flew. In a great chorus they sang, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty! The whole earth is filled with his glory!” The glorious singing shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire sanctuary was filled with smoke.
Then I said, “My destruction is sealed, for I am a sinful man and a member of a sinful race. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!”
Then one of the seraphim flew over to the altar, and he picked up a burning coal with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with it and said, “See this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed and your sins are forgiven.”
Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom shall I send as a messenger to my people? Who will go for us?”
And I said, “Lord, I’ll go! Send me.”
Isaiah 6:1-8
What I would like to do this morning is try and draw some parallels between the call and commissioning of Isaiah as an Old Testament prophet and the call and commissioning of each one of us here this morning, as New Testament Disciples of Christ.
And also the absolute sovereignty of God, in this call.
But first I thought it would be good to look into the picture of the holiness of God, that this scripture is painting.
This passage is referred to in my Bible as Isaiah’s Commissioning. The year in which this took place, the year that King Uzziah died was 740BC. But Isaiah was already prophesying during the reign of king Uzziah, so we can assume that prior to this commissioning, he was already a man of prayer and insight…..
…. He was already spiritually active, so to speak.
Yet even so, nothing could have prepared him for this vision of the absolute splendour and holiness of God, as Isaiah sees God at the centre this heavenly worship, with the train of his robe signifying his majesty, filling the temple.
Apart from this passage of scripture, there is no mention of these angelic seraphim anywhere else in the Bible….
……but the apostle John, who just as Isaiah before him, found himself witnessing first hand, praise and worship in the Heavenly Temple, also spoke of living creatures surrounding the heavenly throne, who never stop saying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,” (Rev 4:6-8)
In Hebrew seraphim can mean burning or fiery, which perhaps indicates the purity of these angelic beings, yet it seems that not even these mighty seraphim who worship in his immediate presence, can gaze directly upon the glory of God…..
…….. So brilliant is his glory that even they have to cover their faces with their wings.
These seraphim are not gently singing holy, holy, holy to each other.
The languages that the Bible is written in do not have any such things as exclamation marks and such like to place emphasis on certain words or passages so it uses repetition.
Normally double repletion.
As far a I am aware, the triple emphasis of a written word only occurs three times in the entire Bible, and two of those occasions are, as mentioned, declaring the holiness of God.
………. We serve a holy God!
The power of the voices of the seraphim in praising God, that this triple emphasis is seeking to convey, is best described by the NIV where it states, “At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.”
It is the doorposts and thresholds that hold a building together.
………Even the heavenly temple itself is shaking with the praise of Almighty God.
As I said, we can assume that Isaiah was already a prayerful man, walking upright in the ways of God and yet, faced with the splendour and holiness of God his immediate reaction was to say…..
………….. “My destruction is sealed, for I am a sinful man and a member of a sinful race. Yet I have seen the king, the Lord almighty.”
We are told in John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God.”
And in John 6:46 Jesus said “Not that anyone has ever seen the Father; only I who was sent from God, have seen him.”
Do you know who Isaiah is actually looking upon? Who he describes as ‘high and exalted?’..
……. Isaiah would later say this of him, “He will be raised and lifted up and highly exulted.” (52:13)
He also said that the train of his robe filled the temple…
………. John describes him in Revelation 1:13 as being dressed in a long robe with a golden sash across his chest.
We actually read in John 12:41 that “Isaiah was given a vision of Jesus’ glory.”
And as the seraphim touches Isaiah lips with a burning coal, removing Isaiah’s guilt and forgiving his sins, we see in action the truth of Hebrews 13:8 that……
…… “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,”….
……….. in this wonderful picture of Christ’s salvation reaching back into yesterday, reaching back through the centuries bringing forgiveness to Isaiah.
When Isaiah found himself in the presence of God, the one thing that he became aware of, overawed by in fact, was his own inadequacy and sin in the face of the majesty and goodness of God….
…… It is not going to be any different for us either.
Without Jesus by our side, our words would be just the same as Isaiah’s were, “Woe is me - My destruction is sealed for I am a sinful man”
Thanks be to God that in Jesus’ own words, “God did not send his son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.” (John 3:17) He did not come to condemn us, but to save us.
As I said, I would like to draw some parallels between the call and commissioning of Isaiah as an Old Testament prophet, and the call and commissioning of each one of us as disciples of Jesus Christ.
In his vision of worship in the Heavenly temple, Isaiah’s eyes had been spiritually opened to the glory of God.
Speaking to Nicodemus, as recorded in chapter 3 of John’s Gospel, Jesus referred to the spiritual opening of our eyes was as being ‘born again,’……
……. “Very truly I tell you,” he said, “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.”
He said, “Flesh gives birth to flesh,” which of course is how each of us was born of our mothers, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to our spiritual life.
Jesus is quite specific in his choice of wording, ‘born again’……
……So in order to understand what Jesus is talking about, let’s think what it means to be born, and then apply this to being born again.
When we were in our mother’s womb, did we have parents? Yes we did! Were we our father’s son or daughter?....……Of course we were!
But did we know that?.....
…… Of course not, we had no way of knowing.
When we were delivered by the mid-wife or Doctor and then handed to our exhausted mother with the words ……..
………“congratulations, you have a son, or you have a daughter,” what part had we played in our conception?..
…………In what way did we bring ourselves to birth through a conscious effort on our part?
Fact is that we were totally passive in the whole process and contributed nothing.
And just as we had absolutely nothing to do with our birth first time round in the flesh, likewise, we have nothing to do with it second time round in the spirit.
Let me read you some words from the second chapter of Ephesians:
“Once you were dead, doomed forever because of your many sins……..
Interestingly enough, on the subject of birth, this verse in the King James Version reads, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins”……
……And to quicken, or the quickening is actually the description of the stage in pregnancy, when the foetus makes movements that can be felt by the mother.
Let me just say here also, that these words “You who were dead” is an accurate description of our true state before we came to Christ……..
….. The Greek word used here also means corpse……
…… And people who are dead cannot do anything to help themselves…..a corpse certainly cannot get itself re-born.
…….. A dead person cannot do anything for themselves, for the very reason that they are dead.
Once you were dead, doomed forever because of your many sins……. But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so very much, that even while we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead….. It is only by God’s special favour that you have been saved……. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God”
….You can’t take any credit for this because you were dead at the time!
I would like to tell you the story of Cecelia Chican
On Sunday, 16th august 1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after taking off from Detroit Airport. 150 people were killed. One survived: a four-year-old named Cecelia.
When rescuers found Cecelia they did not believe she had been on the plane. Investigators first assumed she had been a passenger in one of the cars on the highway onto which the Airliner crashed. But when the passenger register for the flight was checked, there was Cecelia’s name.
Cecelia survived because, as the plane was falling, her mother Paula, unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around her, and then would not let her go.
Nothing could separate that child from her mother’s love, neither the fall of the plane or the flames that followed.
Do you know what part Cecelia played in this mid-air drama that saved her life? Do you know what she contributed?
……Absolutely nothing! Her life was saved for one reason and one reason only, the sacrificial love a mother for her daughter.
At four years of age I doubt whether Cecelia fully understood her mother’ self-less love that saved her life…..
…… But today, age 23 years I would think that this is something that Cecelia has known and cherished for many years.
And this is a wonderful picture of how Jesus covered us with the sacrifice of his own body to save us. And just like Cecelia with her mother, we played no part in this drama of salvation…………
….It was all of God, and until the Holy Spirit opened our eyes in spiritual re-birth….. just like a 4 year old Cecelia would not have understood all the implications of her mother’s sacrificial love……likewise we had no way of understanding either the implications or the enormity of Jesus’ sacrificial love for us.
After its birth, a baby begins to see the world about it and recognise its parents or guardians voice, and in hearing and seeing begins to understand. He or she is not suddenly zapped with all the information needed for life…………
… Indeed life itself actually is a continuous learning process..……..
…….. And our Christian life is also a learning process that continues throughout life. …
……..Through being reborn in Christ, we begin to recognise the beauty of Jesus and see the kingdom of God all around us. Only then do we also see this fallen world as it really is, and our sins for what they really are….
……. It is only when we are re-born in Christ that we begin to recognise Jesus’ voice.
The Bible says, “But people who aren’t Christians” – that is people who haven’t been born again – “can’t understand these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them because only those who have the Spirit can understand what the Spirit means.” (1st Cor 2:14)
You notice the Scripture doesn’t say won’t understand. It says can’t understand. Please hold that in mind.
And let me make a statement that I know many of us have often heard spoken, or indeed have said ourselves:
“When a person accepts Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, the Holy Spirit comes and makes his home in that person and begins a process of sanctification, an on-going process of developing the character of Christ within that person.”
That statement is in line with biblical teaching and is indeed quite true. But in some ways is also misleading, because it seems to suggest that the Holy Spirit is not with that person prior to their acceptance of Christ as Savour and Lord.
Now I know that just as the wind blows where it pleases, so it is with the Holy Spirit, and so there is now way that I am going to try and second guess what the Spirit may or may not do.
But nevertheless, so far as I am aware, birth is usually preceded by pregnancy……
….. and just as we can see from the Scriptures that the Holy Spirit had been active in the life of Isaiah prior to his commissioning…….
…… The Holy Spirit was also active in the lives of each one of us prior to our coming to faith in Jesus….
…….although, in all probability, we would not have known this at the time.
In fact the Bible categorically states that “No one can confess ‘Jesus is Lord’, without being guided by the Holy Spirit.” (1st Cor 12:3)
Without the Holy Spirit’s presence to guide, it is not possible for anyone to come to Jesus Christ and receive him as Lord.
Jesus himself made this very clear. He himself said, “For people can’t come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me.” (John 6:44)
These Scriptures speak of the absolute sovereignty of God in calling us. Remember, Jesus stated, “You did not choose me, I chose you.” (John 15:16)
Isaiah did not choose to visit the Heavenly Temple and see the Lord sitting on a lofty throne. How could he? It was all of God.
But what Isaiah did do, was to choose to say yes to God. He said, “Lord, I’ll go! Send me.”
And this if you like, is the other side of the coin to God’s sovereign choice, genuine human responsibility and freedom to choose…….. or not to choose …….. must also be upheld at one and the same time.
Jesus said, “Here I am, I stand at the door and knock.” (Rev 3:20) But he will not force entry, we must open the door and invite him in….,.He will not violate our freedom to choose.
But the problem is that this false idol called freedom of choice that we speak of….. this much vaunted free will…. is not free will at all……..
…It is simply an allusion of deception fostered by Satan.
Paul goes straight to the heart of the problem in 2nd Corinthians 4:4, where he states:
“Satan, the god of this evil world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe, so they are unable to see the glorious light of the good news that is shining upon them.”
Augustine likened our free will to a pair of scales that we see as perfectly balanced and on these scales we weigh our response to God……..
……Problem is though, although to us they seem perfectly balanced, because of our minds being blinded by Satan, our perception is wrong…..
……….The scales are actually loaded because our human free will itself is heavily biased by our sinful nature.
We are seriously ill and unable to diagnose our own illness. Our only hope lies in Christ as the divine healer, by whose ‘wounds we are healed’ (Is53:5)
We are healed only by the grace of God so that our minds may truly recognise and understand the true state of the loaded scales……
………Only when God, in his sovereign grace, brings us to new birth in Christ and in that new birth opens our eyes to the truth, then and only then, do we really have true freedom of choice.
What a fool we would then be to reject God.
Sadly, some people do just that. I remember once speaking to someone in business who told me that he knew that he needed to receive Jesus as his Saviour and Lord but it would have to wait until he had established a financial security for himself and his family.
What he was doing the Bible calls hardening his heart. After hardening his heart the first time, he will find it much easier to reject God and harden his heart the second time when he considers something else more important. Likewise the third time and so on.
2nd Samuel 14:14 says, “Like water spilled on the ground that cannot be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him.”
In his great love, he devises ways of reaching out to those estranged from him, those separated and alienated from him.
He reaches out to those estranged from him through creation itself.
….. Romans 1:20 says that through creation we can clearly see his external power and divine nature…
……Woven into the very fabric of our creation, he gave us a conscience that tells us right from wrong. Through this he reaches out to us with a conviction of sin. (Romans 2:14-16)
He gave us his written word, the Bible.
There probably never been a saying taken so much out of it’s context than that attributed to Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel on every occasion and if necessary speak.” …..
…..We must speak. “For the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires.” (Heb 4:12)
And God uses those whom he has called to reach those estranged from him.
…..This is the part we play… He uses us.
But in every way that God reaches out to those estranged from him, it is through the activity of the Holy Spirit.……
…….God’s grace goes ahead if you like, preparing the human will for the process of new birth.
And it is the revealing work of the Holy Spirit that opens a person’s heart to the grace of God.
Isaiah was called by God for the specific purpose of taking his message to the people……
……Likewise each one of us was also called by God for the specific purpose of taking his message to the people….
…….. In many ways it’s like planting seeds in people’s hearts that the Holy Spirit at the time of his choosing will bring to harvest.
(And by the way, if you have not met with the risen Jesus. If you have not been reborn, but upon hearing this message this morning your heart feels strangely warmed, or perhaps even as if it is burning inside of you, then now is the time of the Holy Spirit’s choosing for you.)
Those seeds that we plant, in conjunction with the witness of creation itself, the conviction of sin and the written Word of God will cause people to ask questions and seek answers…
.... And what does Jesus promise to those who ask and those who seek?......
…..He promises that they will receive and that they will find.
It is an awesome responsibility, because it is all too easy to also plant seeds of discord, through disagreement, criticism, quarrelling and bickering, and so severely hamper the work of the Holy Spirit.
In fact it is akin to reaching into someone’s heart, taking out, and scattering the good seeds that others have planted.
Jesus said, “Whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
(Mat 12:30)
Still thinking of the activity of the Holy Spirit in the preparation for new birth…..
……..I would like to take a look at the apostle Paul’s dramatic and sudden Damascus Road conversion, because even though it was dramatic and sudden…..
….. I believe we can see the activity of the Holy Spirit in preparing him for this experience through seeds planted, in the faithful witness of those whom he was persecuting.
One of those faithful witnesses who I believe played a leading part in Paul’s conversion was Stephen.
Let’s take a look at that. It’s in Acts chapter 7
Prior to Paul coming to faith Stephen had accused the Jewish leaders of resisting the Holy Spirit and deliberately disobeying God’s law…….
…… And then the Bible says this:
“The Jewish leaders were infuriated by Stephen’s accusation and the shook their fists in rage. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily upward into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing in the place of honour at God’s right hand. And he told them, ‘Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honour at God’s right hand!’
Then they put their hands over their ears and drowning out his voice with their shouts, they rushed at him. They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. The official witnesses took of their coats and laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they stoned him, Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ And he fell to his knees, shouting, ‘Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!’
And with that he died. Saul was one of the witnesses at the killing of Stephen.” (Acts 7:54- 8:1)
The Scripture certainly implies that neither Saul, or Paul as he would later be known, nor anyone else apart from Stephen saw heaven open and Jesus standing at God’s right hand….
… What Paul did see was the faithful witness of Stephen.
Luke, who wrote the Book of Acts, was both a travelling companion and a good friend of Paul.
And I do not think that it is simply coincidental that Luke twice mentions the presence of Paul at the stoning of Stephen. I can imagine that this is something Paul would have spoken of many times on their many travels together.
As Paul met Jesus on the Damascus Road and asked, “Who are you sir?” When Jesus replied “I am Jesus,” Paul did not need to say, “Jesus who?”…….
……..He knew very well who they said Jesus was, he had heard it from the lips of Stephen and many others, but now he knew for himself. What Paul actually said was, “What shall I do, Lord” (Acts 22:10)
Let me put Paul’s response another way, “Lord, I’ll go! Send me.”
To the disciples Saul was an enemy of God and an enemy to them…….. To the Holy Spirit he was the instrument that Jesus had chosen to take his message to the gentiles and to kings as well as the people of Israel. (Acts 9:15)
The prophet Joel did not quote God as saying, “I will pour out my Spirit on the converted,” what he actually said was, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people.” (Joel 2:28)
And just as the disciples had no idea of how the Holy Spirit was at work in Paul……… likewise, we also have no idea of how the Holy Spirit is at work in any person’s life.
I believe that Stephen’s faithful witness, even unto death, was central to the work of the Holy Spirit in preparing Paul for his conversion on the Damascus Road……
……….In the same way our faithful witness is central to the work of the Holy Spirit in preparing those with whom God brings us into contact.
Jesus told his disciples, that’s us, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.”
And if you are a born again believer in Christ, this has already happened to you…….
….. If you are not a born again believer and you know in your heart that the Holy Spirit is calling you, then please don’t be like that business man I spoke of and reject him……..
….. You can leave here this morning as an eternally born, Holy Spirit filled, fully fledged disciple of Jesus Christ
“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will tell people about me everywhere ” (Acts 1:8)
This in a nut shell is our commission, what God has called to do, to assist the Holy Spirit, in what is the Holy Spirit’s ministry, of leading people to new birth in Jesus Christ.
I am going to finish with some words of Jesus taken from the Sermon on the Mount as he explains how we are to go about assisting the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
“Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavours of this earth……. Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colours in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand – shine! Keep open house, be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up to God, this generous Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-16 Msg.)
Let me just read a section from that last line again, “You’ll prompt people to open up to God.”
Jesus is asking us, “Whom shall I send as a messenger to my people? Who will go for us?
Will we answer him as Isaiah did, “Lord I’ll go! Send me.”