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Pick Me! Pick Me! Motivation For Bold Obedience part 2

Of course Isaiah's faith in God was strong and his commitment full, but when he cried out “Here I am!  Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8) he had no idea what assignment he was volunteering for.  What motivated this brash willingness?  Last time, we looked at the crisis and Isaiah’s transcendent picture of God.  As I said then, I hate to rip this holy encounter into bullet points, but I saw several factors and qualities that will help us overcome our own reluctance to obey boldly.

* An honest Picture of Self

So many truths spin off that one revelation of God – high and exalted, full of glory and holiness.  In chapters 1-5 of his book, Isaiah pronounced “woe” eight times on at least nine different expressions of evil:

1. Those who “parade their sin” (Isaiah 3:9)

2. The Wicked (Isaiah 3:11)

3. People who unjustly added “house to house and field to field till no space was left” (Isaiah 5:8)

4. Drunkards (Isaiah 5:11, 22)

5. Rich people who “have no regard for the deeds of the Lord, no respect for the works of His hands” (Isaiah 5:12)

6. Those who “draw sin along with cords of deceit and wickedness as with cart ropes” (Isaiah 5:18)

7. The deceived or calloused “who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20)

8. Proud and arrogant  individuals, “wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight” (Isaiah 5:21)

9. Unjust and greedy men who “acquit the guilty for a bribe but deny justice to the innocent.”

It is a regular “rogues gallery,” a roster of filth and malignancy.  There is no whitewashing the sins of this group.  They are self-centered and uncaring animals.  The woes pronounced – need and humiliation, darkness, judgment, and death – seem to good for them.

It comes as a bit of a shock, then, to hear Isaiah himself plainly declare, “Woe is ME!  I am ruined!  I am a man of unclean lips!”  King James translates that word ruined as “undone.”  The Hebrew means to be cut off into silence.  Isaiah saw the holiness and glory of God, His mighty strength and the unquestioned authority of His throne.  The seraphs above Him were covering their faces, yet somehow Isaiah was given a glimpse of the divine.  Even in “vision” form, this unveiling of God was so overwhelming that Isaiah’s immediate response was to call down on himself the same woe God had commanded him to speak against the vilest of humanity.

In a blink of profound reality, Isaiah discovered that we are all on level ground when it comes to a holy God.  Later on, remembering this vision I think, Isaiah would write: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray.  Each of us has turned to his own way.”  It is this discovery about himself that elicited his reaction.  “Woe is me!  I am ‘cut off into silence.’”  Indeed, the only words that make it past this declaration of ruin are the confessions: “I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.”  The only words that escape those lips afterward are when he blurts out, “Here I am; send me!”

If we could see God as He truly is – and we can, for He is revealed in Scripture – we would see ourselves for who we really are.  Perhaps that is a subconscious reason we often keep God at a distance.  If we see Him, we must be confronted with our own sinfulness, our own inglorious, undeserving stink.  The honor of having God acknowledge our existence, let alone speak to us, should dissolve us.

I think that is exactly what happened.  I picture Isaiah, face to face with himself and quite “undone.”  When God graciously cleansed his lips and declared, with all the authority and power of that throne, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for” Isaiah was undone in a completely different way.  I think being rescued from the death that is self so impacted Isaiah that he burst out with his answer nearly before God finished asking the question.

Several thousand years later, Paul wrote “For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.  And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again… Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Calling us ambassadors sounds so regal, but Paul understood from the moment Christ confronted him that this was a suicide mission, a task that would both inflame and extinguish his life.  But, like Isaiah, he had sufficient motive to risk – and give – everything.  “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst.  But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.  Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen’” (1 Timothy 1:15-17.)

Walk WITH Jesus,

Jim

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