The Man God Send (Isaiah 6:1-8)

This is a unique Sunday. We are stepping out of our series in 1 Peter to collectively recognize and celebrate God’s unique call on Brendan Kirkland by ordaining him as an elder at Orlando Grace Church. As many of you know, we ordain elders with some frequency and at a procedural level, Brendan is no different. He was nominated by you, vetted and trained by us, and affirmed by you. He actually fared better than I did back in 2018 in the congregational vote. 

But, when we are ordaining a man to vocational ministry who has graduated from seminary, sacrificed greatly, and come through our internship and residency pipeline, we want to give that ordination more pomp and circumstance. So, as we did with Clark and, before him, Skyler, we set aside a whole Sunday service to honor and celebrate God’s call in Brendan’s life, God’s faithfulness to His church, and Brendan’s obedience to that call. 

One of Brendan’s favorite chapters in the Bible is Isaiah six which fits so well for this occasion. Yes, Brendan has studied Greek and Hebrew, systematic theology, church history, biblical theology, preaching, and pastoral ministry. Some of the professors who invested in him at RTS are here this morning. And all of that matters greatly. 

But, Isaiah six takes us underneath all of that to something even more important. Before Isaiah was a preacher, before he was a prophet, before he was sent anywhere, something happened to him. He saw God. I want to look at this chapter and answer the one question: What kind of a man does God call?

1. A man who has seen God’s glory 1-4

Isaiah begins the chapter by saying, “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up…” The context matters here because he also tells us that this happened, “In the year that King Uzziah died…” This is important because a king has died, but the throne is most certainly NOT empty. The reign of Uzziah has ended, but God’s reign never does. 

And Isaiah doesn’t see an anxious God unsure unsure of what’s next or feverishly managing the events as they happen. He sees God seated. High, lifted up, and the train of His robe fills the temple. Even the seraphim cover themselves before Him saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 

God’s holiness isn’t merely one attribute alongside His other attributes. It speaks to the absolute otherness, purity, majesty, and perfection of the one true living God. There is no one like Him. It’s one thing to see pictures of the Grand Canyon, but it’s a whole other thing to stand on the edge of it. People know what it looks like, but when they actually see it, the grandeur and beauty of it just takes every word out of their mouths. 

Or have you ever been somewhere far away from city lights where you can really see the night sky? I remember as a kid going to the Bahamas and looking up at night and seeing more stars than I could possibly count. And you realize that every one of those little points of light is an enormous ball of burning gas, many vastly larger than our sun. And our sun is so large that you could fit a million Earths inside it. And that’s just what we can see with our eyes. 

Our galaxy alone contains hundreds of billions of stars and there are billions upon billions of galaxies beyond our own. And somewhere in that vastness is this little planet of ours. Every bit of that exists because God spoke. The Grand Canyon, the oceans, the mountains, every star, every galaxy…all of it exists because God willed it into existence. 

Isaiah tells us that the whole earth is full of His glory. It’s not that the earth contains all of His glory or that creation is big enough to hold Him. But that everything we see is displaying something of the majesty and beauty of the One who made it. And here is Isaiah, not looking at the creation, but the Creator. The One who spoke all of that into existence is seated on His throne and the train of His robe fills the temple. 

And the seraphim, these magnificent heavenly creatures are covering their faces before Him crying out, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts!” Then the foundations of the temple begin to shake at the sound of their voices. This is the God Isaiah sees. 

This is where the calling of a pastor begins. Not with his gifts, not where he can serve, not how charismatic or smart he is, and certainly not with visions of grandeur for his own ministry. The calling begins simply with this: Who is God?

We can’t overlook what this experience with this holy, glorious God does to Isaiah. He is undone by it. We can think of God’s holiness as maybe something nice. Something pure. Maybe scary to a really bad person, but not to us. But that’s not how the Bible talks about holiness. Just think about these seraphim. They are sinless creatures who have never rebelled against God. They have never even had an impure thought and have no need for forgiveness. Yet, what do they do? They cover their faces. The seraphim aren’t covering their faces because they are guilty, they are covering their faces because He is God and they are not.

God isn’t just better than us. He isn’t the best version of what we are, He isn’t one being among other beings, just bigger and stronger. That’s Zeus or Thor. That’s taking the things that we can do and turning all the dials up as high as we can imagine.

God isn’t at the top of the category we belong to, He is in a category all His own. We are created, but He is uncreated. We are dependent, but He is self-existent. We eat, drink, and breath to stay alive, but He has life in Himself. He is perfectly pure, perfectly righteous, perfect in motives. He knows all, never makes a single mistake, and needs nothing from anyone. He is holy, holy, holy. 

If the seraphim cover their faces, what happens to sinful Isaiah? When the seraphim cry out, the temple isn’t the only thing to shake. Isaiah does too. He is very appropriately undone! We don’t really know ourselves until we see God. It’s like walking into brighter and brighter light. The light doesn’t make you dirty, it simply reveals what was already there. 

Imagine you’ve said something terrible about someone behind their back. Something you know you shouldn’t have said. Then you discover that the person has heard every word. THEN they walk into the room. It’s like all the air in the room and rest in your soul just got sucked out. You can’t look them in the eyes. You can’t find any words. Nothing actually changed except the person you’ve wronged has arrived and now you see yourself differently. Now, imagine that person is the one true holy God!

Isaiah is a different person. For five chapters, Isaiah has been looking at what is wrong with everybody else. Judah and Jerusalem. He has looked at injustice, idolatry, and price. He has pronounced woe upon the sins of the people. But then Isaiah sees God. And suddenly Isaiah’s biggest problem isn’t what’s wrong with Israel, it’s what’s wrong with Isaiah. 

And he cries out, Woe to me! For I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips.  Isn’t it fascinating to think that Isaiah is about to be commissioned to speak for God. His lips are going to be the very instrument through which God delivers His Word to His people. But, before Isaiah can speak for God, he recognizes that even his lips are unclean.

That’s what happens in the presence of a holy God. You see all the ways you are not holy. You stop finding faults in other people to feel better about yourself. You all of a sudden don’t even impress yourself anymore. You see more clearly than ever that all of your gifts can never give you standing before this God. 

Brendan, you have spent three years studying God at, in my humble opinion, the best seminary in the world. You have worked hard both as an intern and a pastoral resident. And those are great things. But there is a peculiar danger here… that we can become increasingly familiar with truths that should leave us increasingly astonished. You can explain the Hebrew qadosh, qadosh, qadosh, but no longer tremble before the Holy One. This is a temptation that doesn’t go away. So, my first charge to you is to never allow your knowledge of God to outrun your wonder at God. 

But if all we knew about God was His holiness, we would have every reason to despair. Because the same holiness that exposes our sin also means that our sin cannot simply be overlooked. But Isaiah's story doesn't end with his condemnation. It ends with his cleansing. Yes, the kind of man God calls needs to see the glory of God, but he also needs to feel the grace of God

2. A man who feels the grace of God 5-7

Verse six and seven. ⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ And he ^btouched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

Isaiah doesn’t cleanse himself, the seraph comes to him. Isaiah doesn’t climb his way up to God. God sends the cleansing down to him. And where does the seraph get the coal? From the altar, the place of sacrifice. The place where sin is dealt with. 

Can you see what God is showing us? Isaiah’s sin is not overlooked, it is atoned for. His guilt isn’t minimized, it’s taken away. Now the man who thought he was ruined can stand in the presence of the holy God and hear His voice. All of this is pointing forward to Jesus. 

And we know this because when John is talking about Jesus in John 12, he quotes this very passage from Isaiah six and says that Isaiah saw ‘His’ glory and spoke of ‘Him.’ The glory Isaiah saw was the glory of Jesus Christ. 

Think about that. The eternal Son, who shares the glory that causes even the seraphim to cover their faces, is the one who would come into this world, take on human flesh, and go to the cross for sinners like Isaiah and sinners like us. And on the cross, Jesus did what no burning coal could ever do. He offered Himself as the final and sufficient sacrifice for our sins. He bore the judgement of the wrath of God we deserve, He took away our guilt, and He gave us His righteousness. All of this is pointing to Jesus. All of this is showing us God’s glory, His grace, and His love for His people. But if we don’t see His glory, we won’t see our need for His grace. 

And if we jump from Isaiah all the way to Revelation 22, the end of the story, John describes the new heavens and new earth. The curse is gone. The throne of God and the Lamb are there. And then, in verse four, he tells us about the people who have been redeemed by Jesus. "They will see his face." The God whose holiness caused Isaiah to fall apart is the God whose face we will one day see.

We won’t have to hide or turn away in shame because of what we’ve done or wonder if we are good enough, right enough, or holy enough to be in His presence. All of that has been dealt with by Jesus. We will see His face. Not because God has become less holy, not because our sin wasn’t as serious as we thought, but because Jesus has made us holy. Because His righteousness has become ours. Because the God who could have justly condemned us has made us His children. The very holiness that once made us afraid to come near Him will be the holiness we get to enjoy forever. 

Brendan’s story is his to tell, but I know it well and many of you do too. Brendan is an extraordinarily gifted man who was undone by the distance between God’s holiness and his brokenness. But he was also restored by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Anyone who knows Brendan can see a man who knows he lives by grace. Before anyone is sent to speak for God, they are a sinner who has been cleansed by God. And they spend the rest of their ministry telling other sinners where they can find that same grace. 

Brendan, don’t ever forget that grace. Don’t ever let it feel ordinary. Your real lived experience of God’s grace through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit is one of the greatest tools in your ministry arsenal. Never graduate from the gospel you preach. 

This brings us to the third and final answer to our question: What kind of man does God send? 

3. The man that gives himself to the call of God 8

Look at verse eight. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” Do you see the progression? Isaiah sees God in all of His holiness and he falls apart. God comes to Isaiah in grace, removes his guilt, and cleanses his sin. And now this same man who was just crying, ‘Woe is me!’ is saying, ‘Here I am! Send me.”

So, what changed? Isaiah didn’t become more impressive. Certainly God didn’t become less holy. Isaiah has received grace from the holy God, and now he is ready to give himself to whatever that God calls him to do.

Notice that Isaiah says, ‘Here I am! Send me,’ before he knows where God is sending him or what the assignment will cost. And when we read on, we discover that it will be a difficult ministry to people who largely refuse to listen. Isaiah doesn’t volunteer because he has been promised an easy assignment or impressive results. He volunteers because he has seen the Lord.

Brendan, this is the posture of a man called to ministry. You have worked so hard to prepare for this day. You have studied, served, preached, counseled, and invested in this church in so many ways that most of the people here will never see. And today, we are recognizing the gifts and calling that we believe God has placed on your life. 

But I want you to understand something. We are not ordaining you today because we believe you have everything figured out, because you have mastered every theological question, or because we think you will be the perfect pastor. We are ordaining you because we believe God has called you to give yourself to the care of His people out of an overflow of what God has already given you. 

And neither you nor we know what that will involve. Whether you serve an existing church or plant a new one, you don’t know the suffering you will walk through with people, the calls you will receive in the middle of the night, the difficult conversations you will have, the disappointments you will experience, or the ways God will stretch you beyond what you think you can handle. 

But, we also don’t know the joys either. The people who will come to faith through your ministry, the marriages God will restore, or the people whose lives might be changed from your preaching. We don’t know any of that. But we know the God who is calling you. And you do too. And that is enough to say, “Here I am! Send me.” 

This whole passage makes me think about Peter. Do you remember what happened when Peter first encountered the power of Jesus in Luke 5? Jesus performed a miracle, filling Peter's nets with fish, and Peter fell down at His knees and said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord."

Does that sound familiar? "Woe is me! For I am lost!" And what did Jesus say to Peter? "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." And then, years later, after Peter had denied Jesus three times, Jesus came to Him again. And in John 21, Jesus restored this man who had failed Him so terribly. And what did Jesus tell him to do? "Feed my sheep." The man who knew he was unworthy to stand before Jesus was the man Jesus called to care for His people.

Brendan, the people you are called to shepherd in this church and in other churches down the road belong to Jesus. They are His sheep. He purchased them with His blood. He loves them more than you ever will. And He is entrusting you with the privilege of caring for them. 

So, love them. Feed them. Protect them. Pray for them. Tell them the truth even when it’s hard. Weep with them. Rejoice with them. And when you fail them, as every pastor eventually will, be quick to repent and point them back to the Savior who never will. 

Jesus gave Peter two words: Follow me. That’s the call. Not to know what lies ahead, but to trust the One who does. So, my final charge to you is to keep your eyes on Jesus, keep your heart rooted in His grace, and give yourself to the people He has called you to love. 

God has called Brendan in a particular way, but every one of us who belongs to Jesus is called to respond to Him with our lives. The response of a person who has seen His glory and received His grace is, ‘Here I am. Send me.’

And Brendan, as we ordain you today, this is our prayer: that you would never lose your wonder at the God you proclaim, never graduate from the grace you preach, and never grow weary of loving the people He has entrusted to your care.

‍

Possible communion word to unbelievers: If you are here this morning and you have spent your life trying to make yourself good enough for God…if you wonder if a holy God could ever accept you knowing the things you’ve done and the shame you carry…the good news of Isaiah six is that the God who exposes our sin is also the God who provides cleansing for it. And that cleansing is found only in Jesus Christ. 

‍