Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION

Please take God’s Word and turn once again to Isaiah chapter 6

Last time we looked at the vision in vv.1-4, the confession in v.5, and the cleansing vv.6-7

And now we’re looking at the last part of chapter 6, vv.8-13

This is the commission Isaiah received from the Lord

Listen as I read Isaiah 6:8-13 “Then 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!”

He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.’

“Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed.”

Then I said, “Lord, how long?”

And He answered, “Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, Houses are without people And the land is utterly desolate, “The Lord has removed men far away, And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

“Yet there will be a tenth portion in it, And it will again be subject to burning, Like a terebinth or an oak Whose stump remains when it is felled.

The holy seed is its stump.””

All of us have been given a commission

That commission is commonly referred to as “the great commission”

The great commission is to make disciples

We get that from the command in Matthew 28:18-20, “And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.””

Before we can do this we, like Isaiah, must first be cleansed

When Isaiah saw the Lord and He knew that the Lord saw his sin, this caused him to pronounce judgment on himself and confess his uncleanness

According to vv.5-7, the Lord cleansed and forgave him as seen in one of the seraphim flying to him with a live coal and touching his lips

After He was cleansed the Lord gave him a mission

His mission was to go to the house of Israel and warn them of coming doom

This is where the placement of Isaiah’s call in chapter 6 becomes interesting

As you read chapters 1-5, you hear Isaiah’s message to Israel with the pronouncement of 7 woes

One woe was for himself in Isaiah 6:5.

This message is much needed today but preachers have stopped preaching it

Preachers have succumbed to the culture that they unwilling to offend

They know if you start preaching about judgment, people will get offended and leave the church

They also know if you preach about hell no one will come

So they compromise in order to keep the peace

Instead of worrying about offending lost people, they need to be concerned about offending a holy God

It would be better to offend them now with the truth so they might do something about it now

Galatians 3:24, “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.”

There is a reason why we need to preach the Law

Paul said to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:8-11, “8 But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers 10 and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, 11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted.”

The Law’s purpose is to expose sin

Paul said in Romans 7:7 that he “would not have come to know sin except through the Law, for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’”

Romans 3:20 concludes that “…through the Law comes the knowledge of sin”

Romans 4:15 adds that “...the Law [also] brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation.”

Romans 3:19 says “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God;”

That’s the entire human race

Galatians 4:4-5 says “4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

So the Law brings about the knowledge and conviction of sin and reveals who the lawgiver is

Exodus 20:2, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

The Legacy Standard Bible says, “I am Yahweh your God”

That brings us back to Isaiah 6.

Verse 3 says “Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts” or “Yahweh of hosts” (LSB)

He who is called Yahweh in verse 3 and Adonai in verse 1 is Jesus according to John 12:41.

It is to Him the seraphim are singing about

Israel rejected Him

So have many after them

But some were gripped with astonishment even in their unbelief like the French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte, who lived from 1769-1821

He said, “I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man.

Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison!

Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions.

That resemblance does not exist.…

Everything in Christ astonishes me.

His spirit overawes me, and His will confounds me.

He is truly a being by Himself.

His ideas and sentiments, the truth which He announces, His manner of convincing, are not explained either by human organization or by the nature of things… The nearer I approach, the more carefully I examine, everything is above me–everything remains grand, of a grandeur which overpowers.…

One can absolutely find nowhere, but in Him alone, the imitation or the example of His life… I search in vain in history to find the similar to Jesus Christ.

Neither history, nor humanity, nor the ages, nor nature, offer me anything with which I am able to compare it or explain it.

Here everything is extraordinary.”

Another man who had an impact on Europe and the rest of the world was a man named C.S. Lewis.

In his book, Mere Christianity, he said, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'

That is the one thing we must not say.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice.

Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.

You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.

But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us.

He did not intend to.”

What do you say about Him?

Isaiah’s vision reveals who He is

So did He

He said that “God was His Father” (John 5:18)

He said He was the “I AM” of Exodus 3:14 (John 8:58)

He said, “I and My Father are One” (John 10:30)

He said He was the “Alpha and Omega” (Revelation 1:11)

He could say all this because that’s what the Scripture says of Him

In Matthew 1:21 He is called “Immanuel, God with us”

In Romans 9:5 He is called “the eternally blessed God”

In 2 Peter 1:1 He is called “Our God our Savior”

In 1 John 5:20 He is called “the true God and eternal life”

In Hebrews 1:8 the Father called Him “God”

In John 20:28 Thomas boldly exclaimed “My Lord and My God”

In Titus 2:13 He is called “our great God and Savior”

In Titus 2:10 and 3:4 He is called “God our Savior”

Last in Romans 10:13 which is a quotation of Joel 2:32 He is again called “Yahweh”

That is His name in Isaiah 6:3.

This is the Jesus who came that Christmas morning born of lowly parents in a lowly place

Even His bedding was with the animals as Mary and Joseph placed Him in a feed trough or manger

But what do you do with what you know about Him?

You tell the world!

When Isaiah was cleansed He was ready to go and preach God’s message

The same is true today but we learn the priority of the great commission from the shepherds in Luke 2.

After the angels gave them the good news about Jesus and after went and saw Mary and Joseph and the Baby, Luke 2:17 says after they left “...they made known the statement which had been told them about this Child.”

They were the first New Testament evangelists