Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, thank you for all of our mothers. Yes, the women who birthed us, raised us, loved us, taught us, prayed for us, and gave their lives for our sake. I ask that you bless mothers of all shapes, sizes, colors, and types: spiritual, birth, adoptive, stepmom, foster mom, 2^nd mom, work mom, grandmom, soon to be mom, the grieving mom. Lord, you cherish all women and radically change their lives through their children, no matter how the children come.

On the cross as you hung, you gave your earthly mom, a son, in John, showing us that no mom is forgotten in grief and loss. I ask for that type of comfort for those moms here grieving. Only you can comfort that type of grief, let your people rally around those women passionately.

On the flip side, some of us on this day have immense sadness because the loss of moms, please bring those people joyful memories they can reflect on, knowing that their moms are only lost here on this reality, but are with you in glorious eternity. I ask that the power of your love come over all of us.

Today, let your holiness become known to each individual, that your forgiveness reigns supreme in our hearts, and that your authority washes our lives so that we are filled with awe. We want to seek your glory and your presence. You deserve more than we can ever give or do. Thank you for receiving us with open arms, calling us son and daughter. Through you, we have meaning and value that the world cannot give. Continue to overflow our lives with your everlasting goodness. Open our eyes to your scripture and your purposes today. In Jesus name. Amen.

Today, I’m going to conclude our mini-series on Isaiah 6 with this idea:

Big Idea: God’s calling compels us to go.

Let’s read Isaiah 6:1-13 today.

¹In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. ² Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. ³ And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”

⁴ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. ⁵ And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for 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 burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

⁸ 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.” ⁹ And he said, “Go, and say to this people:

“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
¹⁰ 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.”
¹¹ Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”
And he said:
“Until cities lie waste
    without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
    and the land is a desolate waste,
¹² and the Lord removes people far away,
    and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
¹³ And though a tenth remain in it,
    it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak,
    whose stump remains
    when it is felled.”
The holy seed is its stump.

Isaiah 6:1-13 ESV

Some context and a little bit of recapping from the last few weeks:

Uzziah was king of Judah for 52 years. For most of his reign, you can read it yourself in 2 Chronicles 26, the Bible says that he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, seeking God and living in fear of the LORD. In fact, the Bible said that God blessed Uzziah and the nation of Judah because of Uzziah’s faithfulness to God.

Toward the end of his reign, Uzziah became proud and unfaithful to God. His unfaithfulness wasn’t a deconstruction of his faith or idolatry in worshipping other gods. It was much more practical, he became self-righteous and angry toward the people of God who were trying to help him become better.  

Does this sound familiar? How many of us ever get self-righteously angry at the person trying to make sure we’re learning and doing the right thing? Let me change how I said that because I know nobody here is self-righteously angry except me, how about defiantly stubborn? Anybody willing to own that?

My mom used to say this to my brother and me all the time growing up, “just wait until you have kids. They’ll teach you!” Yeah, I think all of us owe our moms an apology for our obstinance. You can call her up after this service, if she isn’t already sitting to you, and if she is, just give her a wink and make sure you take her out to coffee after this.

So Uzziah was trying to offer God an offering, but he was ceremonially unclean, he wasn’t consecrated like the priests were to offer God a sacrifice in the temple. 80 priests tried to stop him from doing the wrong thing and he got angry with them in the temple. The Bible then said that leprosy broke out starting with his forehead and that caused him to be kicked out from his own house until his death. The man was a king, favored by God, for a long time, and because of his pride, through a single act of  defiance and anger, he became unfaithful to God.

The reason I’m highlighting his story is because the Prophet Isaiah was the guy responsible for documenting the history and rule of Uzziah. So imagine what a disappointment this was to Isaiah. “The year Uzziah died,” is an important year. It’s the year Isaiah lost hope for his country.

As a historian and as a prophet, he witnessed Uzziah die without being reconciled with God. The king of God’s nation died exiled from his own home and buried like a pauper in a random field owned by the monarchy and not with his predecessors.

To Isaiah, that was foreshadowing of what was coming: a nation being exiled and left to die in random places, unreconciled with God. That’s when God entered the picture with a vison to Isaiah.

In verses 1-4, Isaiah describes being in the presence of God’s holy throne room. He witnesses the glory of God in the face of hopelessness, and his hope is restored because he, an unholy, wicked person, witnesses the glory of God.

Then in verses 5 – 7, Isaiah is offered the forgiveness of sins, and reconciliation with God. The reconciliation with God allows Isaiah to be in the very presence of God. This is what is amazing: forgiveness came, not as something earned by Isaiah, but as grace from God touching the life of Isaiah. The Seraphim, who, at the command of God, did for Isaiah what he could not do for himself. Isaiah receives the reconciliation that Uzziah did not receive.

This is representative of how God reconciles us to himself to us through Jesus Christ. Upon our recognition of our sinfulness, and our desperate need for God, we can trust in Jesus to cleanse us from our sins bringing us into rightful communion with God.

Jesus took on the wrath of God for our sins on Calvary. His blood sacrifice was accepted and satisfied the justice required by a holy God. It was the will of God that Jesus would die for us so we could be received by him.

None of us can receive the eternal life Jesus Christ offers through his life, death, and resurrection, unless we’re willing to let die the obstinance, sins, hardheartedness that keeps us from admitting our need for God.

This is why the death of Uzziah is so important. It’s when we let our pride die, because that will never get reconciled with God, because pride has no sense that it needs God. That God can and will come to you. We all come before God undeserving of his grace but we receive it freely as a gift because he wants us to be in his presence, to see life beyond hopelessness, beyond death.

None of us earned salvation. In fact, we are invited into grace through God’s own volition.

So here we are, in the presence of God, with the people chosen by God. A bunch of undeserving people, invited to be in the presence of God despite who we are, to worship him and witness his glory manifest before us. That’s what church is. None of us belong here, but we are here because of God.

Come, let’s looklook at  at verses 7 and 8 again.

⁷ And [the seraphim] touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” ⁸ And I heard the voice of the Lord… (Isaiah 6:7-8a ESV)

The immediate effect of God’s atonement for our sins is reconciliation with him. When you are reconciled with God, you hear from God! Did you catch that in verse 8?

Isaiah says “and I heard the voice of the Lord.” His sins were atoned for AND he heard the voice of God. Immediately after Isaiah was reconciled with God, Isaiah overheard God speaking. Isaiah didn’t hear God before that. He saw God, He heard the angels singing, “holy”, but he didn’t hear God’s voice.

The call of Isaiah had is not unique to prophets or particularly devout individuals. If you received atonement for your sins, and are reconciled with God, then hearing the voice of God is the norm. Isaiah illustrated how undeserving he was. He described himself like we would and still God reconciles and then speaks directly to.

Family, our God is alive and active today. If what we’re doing is just static theology and empty religion, we’re wasting our time. We all know that. So we cannot live ignoring the voice of God to us—his calling on our lives, his purposes for our lives. Just like Isaiah, we are reconciled to God for that purpose, so we can hear the voice of God. The voice of God comes to us in many ways, it comes from the Word of God, the Bible. It comes to us in visions, like Isaiah, prayer, miracles, preachers, the Holy Spirit.

Just like Isaiah, we are reconciled to God for that purpose, so we can hear the voice of God. He doesn’t reconcile you to himself by sacrificing his very own son so he could be some cosmic observer or an idea in our heads. He reconciles himself to us through Jesus Christ so that we can have the opportunity, like Isaiah, to hear from God. So we must

Listen for God’s calling

This just opened up a can of worms. I know. Now, the voice of God comes to us in many ways,

• it comes from the Bible, breathed out by God for the teaching, correction, reproof, and equipping of God’s people
• It comes to us in visions, like Isaiah,
• prayer, yeah, when we pray and give space for God to speak, he does
• miracles, because God still works through miraculous healings, and people placing their trust in Jesus, that’s a miracle
• preachers, by saying something to invite you or challenge you
• the Holy Spirit, prompting your conscience, your heart, your thoughts
• other believers, speaking into your life

Here’s the thing about the voice of God, no matter how he speaks, he is clear, personal and always confirms himself. I know pastors, we get up here, and we sound confident and assured in faith. But before we get up here, we have to work things out with God, to get clarity, to hear from God. You think I, or any other pastor gets up here to say things without the prompting of God? Absolutely not. In fact, when you read the biographies of preachers or missionaries, the wrestling for clarity is the same and interestingly enough, the calling is always the same:

God says to Isaiah in the second half of verse 8, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

You don’t think God knows that Isaiah is creeping up in his throne room? Of course he does. This wasn’t random in God’s asking. God wanted Isaiah to hear the call.

A lot of us hear the voice of God calling us, prompting us, inviting us, challenging us. Unfortunately, not many of us respond.

The last few weeks we’ve been highlighting the stories of people receiving a calling to specific places and people for the gospel. To that end, we’ve been raising funds, beyond our normal tithes and offerings to support the expansion of our partnerships and abilities to empower and send people called by Jesus to proclaim his good news to people living in places where there are no Christians, no missionaries, and no churches to share the good news.

One of the partnerships I’m personally excited about is with an organization called, “Our Daughters International.” This organization provides safe houses, shelter, food, counseling, and spiritual care to women rescued from sexual slavery at the Nepal/India border. Let me share how big the commission is for this ministry:

• 25,000+ girls are trafficked from Nepal to India each year
• ODI staff, primary former survivors, interview women and girls crossing the border into India to try and identify trafficking victims. Each year about 900-1,200 trafficking victims are identified and reunited with the families.
• About 150 of the trafficking victims are not able to go home or have experienced a high level of trauma that they need to seek refuge in ODI’s safe house where they receive emotional, physical and spiritual care.
• After several months at the safe house the girls are invited to attend a one-year training program at ODI’s training center where they can continue their formal education, receive vocational training and go deeper with their discipleship training.
• Upon graduation from the training center, these once victims are now community leaders and return to their communities to start businesses and share the gospel. Over the past 15 years, nearly 1,200 churches have been started as a result of these Daughters.

The founder is Ramesh Sapkota, and I just want share how he obeyed God’s call to start that ministry.

Ramesh was born to a family of hindu priests and when he was very young, his mother ran away and left the family. As a teenager, he had a life-threatening illness that needed to be treated and he would often walk 5 hours to get to the hospital for treatment in a neighboring city. It was while he was being treated at the hospital that he was hugged by one of the nurses and experienced love from another human.

That’s when he vowed to go find his mom. He got better, left his home and began searching for his mom. In hindu culture, not having a mom is shameful, so in his search for his mom, he found himself regularly abused, ridiculed, and shamed by people. After a long-failed search, he was on his way back home where he and his mother crossed paths and were reunited.

She had been searching for Ramesh, hoping to reconcile with him, because she had gotten remarried and became a Christian and was being called by God to reconcile with the son she had abandoned. So reunited with his mother, he lived with her and stepfather. At some point, he also receives Jesus as his savior.

In the early nineties, Ramesh and his mother were ministering at a hospital and encountered an HIV positive woman. This was one of the first cases of HIV in India at the time and HIV at the time was new across the globe. Compelled by God, Ramesh and his mother brought the woman home and cared for her. They learned she was a recently discarded sex slave, who, for most of her life was forced to have sex with 20-30 men a day. On her death bed, the woman asked Ramesh to find her child. She had a child in the brothel she was enslaved to and didn’t know what had happened to the child after she gave birth.

So he took the call to look for the child. He went looking for an undocumented child in an undocumented business industry, in a very large city. Needle in the haystack. After a long search, he finally finds the brothel but he doesn’t find the child, but he finds 10 young women, trafficked from Nepal to be sex slaves, and so he goes on to liberate those women. The organization wasn’t the result of strategic planning and well thought out agendas. It was Ramesh hearing the voice of God and obeying. The women that were liberated, they were no longer victims, they became seen as daughters.

Are we being obedient to the call of God that is already on our lives? Are you responding in faith and obedience like Isaiah or like Ramesh saying, “Yes! I’ve seen your majesty and experienced your love. Here I am! Send me!”

If so, then take a step of faith and…

Go to the world

Right before Jesus’ ascension into heaven, he gives his disciples this command:

^18b “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20 ESV

Some of us, we’re at the mountain, standing with Jesus. God has been tugging on our hearts, filling the voids of our thoughts to make disciples of all nations. But our struggle is not that we’re called; it’s what happens when we actually obey the voice of God by going.

Turn your attention to the screens, I want to share a video of a young lady who responded to the voice of God and the call of the gospel in her life to go.

[PLAY VIDEO] – Five minutes

In Isaiah 6:9-13, God tells Isaiah exactly what to expect. It will be a struggle. But there’s hope no matter how bleak it appears God says. Verse 13 says, “the holy seed is the stump.” That is where we peg our hope and keep obeying the voice of God to Go and make disciples of all nations.

I’m going to give you three ways you can respond to God’s calling compelling you to go:

1. GO to another location, another culture, country, or people group and live and work as a missionary for the sake of the gospel. Scan the QR code, send me your info, let’s talk.
2. Share the gospel to people who have walked this life similarly to ourselves, with the same backgrounds, hurts, pains, scars, upbringings, just like in the video we just watched. Go after them. They are literally waiting for you to invite them into a conversation about Jesus.
3. Put your money where your mouth is by SENDING and supporting the advancement of the gospel globally by financially funding and resourcing those who are going. You can scan the QR codes in the mother’s day insert or give online. We have a chance to leverage our wealth here in this earth to equip, encourage and enable those going to have the resources for ministry in their global context.

I love this quote from Charles Spurgeon:

If Jesus is precious to you, you will not be able to keep your good news to yourself; you will be whispering it into your child’s ear; you will be telling it to your husband; you will be earnestly imparting it to your friend; without the charms of eloquence you will be more than eloquent; your heart will speak, and your eyes will flash as you talk of his sweet love. Every Christian is either a missionary or an impostor… It cannot be that there is a high appreciation of Jesus, and a totally silent tongue about him.

(C. H. Spurgeon, The Sword and Trowel: 1873 London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1873, 262–263).

Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, something needs to change in the world where 42% of the people living on this planet do not know you. Where they have no hope to ever being reconciled with their creator. What an immense need! We realize that you designed our life to spread your hope amid the most hopeless in the world, and we want to honor that purpose and give people the belonging they all intrinsically crave in search of you. Lord, to that end we know all of us are called, just like Isaiah because we had an opportunity to worship you freely with others who are similarly called son and daughter of the most high God. We know that you have given freely, from your own grace and mercy, your son Jesus to be the atonement for our sins. As we examine our lives, and listen to your voice, let us be confident in the faith that you provided to follow you wholeheartedly.

Lord, I want to pray for those who have been wrestling with their calling. With whether or not the voice they are hearing is yours. Give those people right now assurances that they can place their trust in you so you can do in them what you did for Isaiah in his ministry, and the disciples in their ministry: to give them boldness and resolve to lay down their lives for the glory of the gospel.

For those of us who are here who haven’t heard from you or haven’t seen from you. Open our ears, our eyes, our hearts to what you want from us. Lord as we go from this place, give us the faith to lean on your spirit to guide us and move us to place our trust in your son, Jesus. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.