If you'd like, you can go ahead and make your way over to Isaiah chapter five. We're going to be in this neighborhood for most of our time tonight. There's ways that you realize you're getting older. I've said one of those is when people stop singing the hymns that you know, but thank you for not doing that this week. I appreciate the singing so much. It was so good. I sure hope on the other side, when we're in that eternal moment, that the hymn writers get to keep writing hymns, don't you? And think about what they've done in this limited capacity, but what they could do in knowing God face to face would be and amazing thing. And I hope song leaders get to keep leading singing, and that'd be an amazing thing to think about joining with saints from every era together in the presence of God. One other way is, you know you're getting old, is when you start describing things in decades. And I can honestly say to you that I go back further with College View than any other church, because I was at college view from zero to three years old. My parents were a young couple way back then, and my father was a state trooper, and he was stationed over in this area, and they always spoke favorably, my mother still does. And so I've always had kind of a soft spot for this congregation, and then even more so when I was in college and got to enjoy just the care, the love that this group showed. And I tell you, it's an encouragement when you see a church that's lasted for decades,. You know that there are basically three things going on. You've got, A people who love the Lord, and B, you've got really good leadership, and C, you've got really good teaching going on. And I know all three of those have been and continue to be true, so I thank you so much for the opportunity that you've given me these past few days to be here. I guess my favorite movie is Mr Smith Goes to Washington. And at the end of it, when he's making his big debut on the floor of the Senate, and they're the people associated with him are giving him advice, and they say, don't yield the floor. I'll have to say I would have gladly yielded the floor to these other two men in any of my time slots. I have just so enjoyed these sermons that have been preached. I've never been associated with either, and I'm just so thankful and blessed to have had this opportunity, and I hope this relationship can continue somewhat. And I know that they do great works where they are, but they've done a great work here, and I appreciate the good, good lessons that they've brought. So thank you very much for all that you've done.
But let's go ahead and get started in our topic tonight. And I'll just start it out by saying, when you study the Old Testament prophets, if you're not struck by the magnitude of these men, go back and study them again. These were men who some gave their entire lives into the service of God. Now there's some we don't know really a whole lot about. They just kind of quickly give us their written take on things, and they're off and we don't have much about them. But those that we have a longer storyline concerning them and their work, we learned that they were asked to do things that are almost beyond belief. You think about Jeremiah in his long book that's that's spanning all these different times in his life, his book is just kind of like a photo album and you'll have a picture of this terrible situation. And then another here you think about how many times that he didn't know if his life would last another 24 hours. It's amazing. You think about a man who's told to go into the land of harlotry and find a wife. Then you come to the prophet Isaiah, and isaiah's book is not nearly the storyline of the Prophet, as say, The Book of Hosea or the book of Jeremiah would be. But yet it is a cornerstone of the Hebrew Bible. This long book spanning the reigns of several kings, where this prophet is bringing the message of God is a fixture. It's in many ways, holding things in place. But we don't stop there. When we come into the New Testament. We find this book being quoted in so many different places. Someone once gave Isaiah the nickname of the fifth gospel. And in a lot of ways, that's true, because you've got so many Messianic prophecies and promises being made, and the New Testament writers referring back to that. And so this evening, what I'd like for us to do is to camp out just a bit here in the book of Isaiah, and we're going to spend some time here in chapters five and six, as we look at a time which I think is a moment of realization for the prophets. And the way that it's seated within the book is very uniquely going to show us the attitude that he came to not only about himself, but more importantly, about God. But to understand that, what we need to do is to think a little bit about how this section is set up. In chapter five, we're going to read here in just a few minutes, about Israel being described as a wayward vineyard. From Genesis two to the book of Revelation garden imagery dominates the Bible. We had a reference this morning where Andy was talking about the Oaks the trees. How many times do trees make an entrance into the Bible story? And we also find that much of this garden imagery is going to be associated with a vineyard, and often in Isaiah is we're going to see that vineyard is not doing what it ought to do. So, we're going to talk about that in just a minute.
But what I'd like to do first is to give you a bit of a picture of what we're going to be looking at. I'm always a bit hesitant to say now this is how the writer wanted us to understand it. Without the writer being here to tell us, that would be a bit presumptuous, but when you begin looking at how units fall together, you can make a pretty good guess about what he's wanting you to understand. And that's what we've got going on here. In the first part of Isaiah, chapter five, what we're going to find is how Israel abandons God. That's this vineyard that's been just deserted. And then, as we move on into verse eight of chapter five, on over into the first part of chapter six, we're going to have the Prophet declaring woes on the people of Israel. And then in chapter six, for a few verses, we're going to see kind of the bookend of that abandonment of God. God says, in your decision to desert me, this is what you can expect. And it's going to be in this middle section where we're going to come to isaiah's realization, but we'll be there in just a few minutes.
Let's start though here in chapter five and read this song of the vineyard. Let's begin in verse one. He says, "Let me sing for my beloved, my song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it, and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done for it? When I look for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste. It shall not be pruned or hoed, and briars and thorns shall grow up. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it."
The picture that is so eloquently drawn for us here is what God has done for his nation. God the vine dresser came in. He found the most fertile spot. He got the ground prepared, he removed all the obstacles. He put up barriers so that the wildlife could not get in it. He built a wine press there so that the product of the vineyard could come to something good. And so throughout all of this, we find these blessings that God had given to the people of Israel. But the song goes on, and it says, despite everything God had done, that all this vineyard would do is to produce what was common. What you could find in any forest or any woods. And the picture that he's presenting is, I made you for something very special, and what you have done instead is given me nothing of any value. And so, with that picture presented, he says there's going to be a penalty for that. And it's basically an undoing of everything that he just said he had done. I'm going to remove the hedges. I'm not going to get the weeds out, I'm going to let the wildlife in. I'm going to tell the clouds not to rain on this vineyard anymore. In other words, God is saying because you have not done what you were designed to do, you are going to be returned back into that wilderness.
And then we come to a very interesting part of this because I stopped a verse short. And I wanted to do this because it'll help us maybe to see this verse up on the screen. Because, as Isaiah is writing this, he's doing a bit of a word play on it that fits in to what he's just said in verse seven, he says, "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting, and he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed. For righteousness, but behold an outcry." God had such high hopes. And he said, When I looked down on my vineyard, I wanted to see justice. When you and I hear that term, we almost always think retribution, don't we? We'll hear someone who's being interviewed and maybe pounding a fist against a table and saying, I demand justice. And what they're saying is, is that here is somebody who is believed to have harmed them and and they're wanting recompense for that. Well, that idea is in the Bible for sure. But more times than not, justice is not retribution. It's restorative. God says, When I want my people to exercise justice, what he's saying is, I want you to look for the widow and the orphan and the lame and the blind and those on the fringes of society, and I want you to be a light for them. I want you to provide what they need. He said, I look for justice and I look for righteousness. And we could put several definitions to that word, but let's just narrow it down to this one. It's when you are treating someone in the way an image of God should be treated.
Now, here's what Isaiah did. Doesn't really catch us in English, but for the people who would have originally read this book, when you looked at the word justice and bloodshed, they were almost identical. And when you looked at the words righteousness and outcry, they were almost identical. And I think what Isaiah is doing is is kind of playing on that idea that he just wrote about. If you had looked at this vineyard from a distance, you might have said, hey, it's got a pretty good crop growing. I see all these grapes, but when you get up close, what you see is that they are nothing but these wild, common grapes that are not what a vine dresser would want. And so, Isaiah is saying, you know, if you looked at this nation from a distance, you might not see what was going on, but if you get up close, what you're going to see is not justice and righteousness, but instead, you're going to see bloodshed, and you're going to see or hear this outcry because of their wickedness. And God says, Let me tell you what's to come because of this.
Look over with me to chapter six. In chapter six, we've got verse nine, and he said, "Go and say to this people, keep on hearing but do not understand. Keep on seeing but do not perceive. 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. Then I said, How long, O Lord? And he said, until the cities lie waste without inhabitant, the houses without people. The land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land." It sounds to me like God is pretty serious about this. He says, because of what you have failed to do in your mission, this is the future you face now with those parameters set, let's think about the fruit that they have produced. Because what we're going to find, backing up into chapter five is that Isaiah is going to present this as though he is a lawyer in the court. And each time he's bringing a complaint against the people, he's going to start it out with the word woe. I think that might be a good thing to return to the courtroom. So, when you are accused of something, Woe to this man who has done this. Well, that's what Isaiah is about to do. And so if you put yourself in this courtroom scene of God. Now, Isaiah will use that word woe several times throughout the book, but this is the highest concentration as he begins to bring these charges against the people of Israel. And so, as he starts out in chapter five, verse eight, he says, "Woe to the land hungry who take for selfish gain." You look at verses eight through 10, and he's describing here of people who are looking at houses and fields. And it says that they're they join house to house, and they add field to field, until there is no more room, and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land. I feel a little bit like this in North Alabama right now, don't you? You grow up looking at all these cotton fields, and now they're growing subdivisions, and it's just like houses lining up. But that really doesn't capture the sense, because for Israel, land was a significant part of the covenant to have land was a reminder that God had established you. And I think what he's doing here is he's describing these greedy, rather wealthy people who are going in and in whatever way they can. They're buying up the land of the poorer landowners till they are completely left out. And what you've got in this is kind of this picture of their just eating up all of these things in such a greedy fashion that they're leaving it for no one else.
And he continues, he says, "Woe to the drunkard." If you look in verse 11. "Who rise early in the morning that they may run after strong drink, who tarry laid in the evening as wine enflames them. They have lyre and they have harp, tambourine and flute and wine at their feast, but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord or see the work of his hands." Here are people who have turned sobriety completely away, saying, we want this partying lifestyle. We want this continual happiness. We're just intoxicated with all of these things with ourselves. And so it's an interesting picture, really. In that first woe, You've almost got a picture of gluttony, don't you? It's not food, but it's landowners just gobbling up all of this land. And then you follow that with the Woe to the drunkard. Now Isaiah is going to stop his case for a minute. He's pronounced two woes, and now we're going to see that followed by two therefores, in which he says, this is the judgment that's going to come. And so he says, Therefore, you're going to go into exile. Because of this verse 13 is going to show us that. That's a promise God has been making since very early in their history, that if you do not obey me, you are going to go into a foreign land, and they're just about there.
And then he says, "Therefore, Sheol will devour." Look at verse 14 with me. "Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opens its mouth beyond measure, and the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude will go down, her revelers and all who exalts in her." So, if that first woe is really this very greedy kind of idea of this gluttonous taking of land. He says, Let me tell you who's really going to devour, and it's the grave here, or death. And he says, it's really like Sheol is going to unhinge its jaws so it's a little bit wider, and this monster of chaos is going to come and consume you. That's a promise God is making. And then, as he's paused to pronounce that judgment. He says, I also need to tell you something about God. And he follows in verses 15 and 16. And he says, "Man is humbled, and each one is brought low, and the eyes of the haughty are brought low, but the Lord of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness." We get that? He said, You failed. You were a wayward vineyard. I went looking for justice and righteousness. I found bloodshed and an outcry, but God's not going to be mocked. If you refuse to do it, God's going to be exalted, and he will show that justice. So, two woes, two therefores of judgment, contrast with God.
And now Isaiah is about to double the woes. He's going to give us four now. And he says, as he continues, "woe to those tied to iniquity." Verses 18 and 19 make it sound kind of like a cart and a horse. That you've got the horse hooked up to the cart, so where the horse goes, the cart's going. He says, that's a lot what you're like. That wherever iniquity is, that's where I'm finding you. It's like you're bound together. And he follows that by one that if we didn't understand any of the others, we can sure understand this one. He says, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil." That sounds a whole lot like the 21st century in the West, doesn't it? That we have things that God has described in terms of evil, wickedness, abomination. And even this month, it's designated as an entire month celebration of good, with corporations falling all over themselves to show we're on board with this. This is good. But to stand up lovingly, as a Christian always does in calm tones, as a Christian always does, to explain the error of that. We have a portion of our society that says that is wicked. You see what's going on? Isaiah says to them, and indirectly to us, God's going to haul you into court. If you take what he said is good and you say it's bad and what he said is bad, you try to turn it into good. And what causes that to happen? The next woe explains it.
He says, "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes." Those who have made the decision that we don't need to listen to God. We don't need to listen to His prophets, we don't need to listen to his apostles. We need to listen to his preachers. We don't need to listen to anybody. Well, that's what we find, too. That there are those who are saying we are so beyond those old fashioned, quaint notions of the Bible. We've arrived intellectually. And Isaiah says, I'll see you in court.
And then woe number six, I just kind of summed it up. Woe to those blinded to justice and righteousness. Let's read verses 22 and 23, "Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine. Valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of his right." That's forgetting justice and righteousness. And so he says. In relation to these woes, therefore a fire is going to break out and it is going to devour. It's kind of like if you go out, maybe even right now, where you see someone who's been growing wheat, and they've just cut the ground back, and it's been so dry, you got that stubble there. If someone were to light a match in that you'd have a major, major fire. God says, I'm about to set you on fire. So, here's this vineyard that he wanted to be prosperous and grow, and yet it's nothing more than something that just needs to be burned off. And he says, "Therefore the anger of the Lord is kindled."
And so, what follows in chapter five, it's kind of this picture of the nation that's coming in to take them down. And it's a frightening passage. Verse 26 God says, I'm going to raise a signal for the nations far away, whistle for them to the ends of the earth, and behold, they're going to come quickly, speeding in. They don't get tired. Their arrows are sharp. Their bows are bent. Their horse's hooves seem like flint. Their wheels are like the whirlwind. Their roaring is like a lion. Like young lions, they roar when they growl and seize prey." How would you like to face an army like that? They never get tired. Their arrows are always sharp. The wheels are so fast it looks like a whirlwind coming in. But I want you to note with me the last description in verse 30. He says, "they will growl over it on that day like the growling of the sea. And if one looks to the land, behold darkness and distress, and the light is darkened by its clouds." Now it seems that's a little out of place, right? All we're talking about lions, and all of a sudden we're talking about the sea. Well, it's not out of place, because if you think back to Genesis chapter one, what are things just, hiw are things described before God created the earth? It said they were void and dark. It's like this churning water, the darkness is covering it. And what Isaiah is saying to Israel is God is about to return you to that chaotic state. He is about to decreate you because you have failed to live up to what you promised to do.
Now where would you go in Isaiah after this? We might expect that the next scene would be maybe a theophany. Maybe the judge appears that the court's gone on, and in a sense that's going to happen. But it seems like we just make a total shift, right? We're reading all this poetry, and we've got the gloom and doom, the six woes that have been pronounced, the judgment that's going to be brought and so we're kind of expecting, maybe to find out where this story is going to end. And we look in verse one of chapter six, and it says, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon the throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple." So, have we just finished a section, and Isaiah has opened up the next chapter. And really no big connection. I don't think that's the case. Because what we're about to see is what the lawyer had to realize, what the man of God had to realize. This is one of the most magnificent scenes in the Bible, and as Isaiah finds himself here in the temple of God, and the Lord sitting on his throne. You know, the Ark of the Covenant, kind of represented the footstool. It was as though God was, the invisible God, was seated in the most holy place. But in this vision, he's there, and Isaiah seeing him. It's no symbol. He's there in this vision. And it says, "the train of his robe filled the temple. 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. And one called to another and said, Holy, Holy. Holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory." You ever closed your eyes and tried to imagine the scene? I hope you have whatever these creatures look like. I suspect they'd be terrifying, don't you? Anything with six wings flying around and not only that, yelling to each other. But Isaiah doesn't get caught up in that. He says, I want to tell you about what they're saying. They are saying that the one who is seated on the throne is holy, and he is so holy that one time isn't enough.
And so, it's this three times that they shout to one another about the holiness of God. Because what the picture is seeking to show us is that holiness belongs solely to God. It is unique to him, and it's what makes him God. He is not a part of the creation. He is the Creator. He's separated from it. He's not like us in that way. And so here is Isaiah, and he sees all of this going on, but he's also coming to understand that he has a purity that God does, that is never going to be sullied by any sin. The perfect one on his throne, with His majestic beings with him, crying out about his holiness, letting it be seen. And they go on after that, and they say the whole earth is full of, and we might expect the word holiness there, right? Holy, holy, holy. The whole earth is filled with His Holiness. That's not what they say. They say the whole earth is full of his glory. Well, what exactly are they saying here? What this is talking about is that the holiness that God is is visible to the entire Earth, if they're looking for it, in his glory. That word glory is weightiness. It's something serious, something heavy. And they're saying the magnificence of God is seen in every place.
And we stopped at six woes a minute ago. We know our Bibles well enough to know that if we get to six, we're likely going to get seven. And as Isaiah looks at all of this, verse four says, "the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And he said, Woe, is me." He took it takes a very inward look. He's pronounced woes on land gluttons and drunkards and people who have neglected righteousness holiness, and as he sees this magnificent scene of God on His throne and His majestic splendor, as though the veil has been torn so that he can see on the other side. He says, "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." Isaiah, says, I'm a dead man, is what I am. Because here I am, not only in the temple, but here I am in the presence of the living, holy, glorious God. And I deserve to die. We know that God once told Moses, no man can look at my face lest he die. We just can't take God in. And so at times, God gives a vision to men so that they can understand it a little bit better. But this is so magnificent that the only thing Isaiah can think about is what a wretch I am, what a wicked man I am, and I deserve to die.He goes on, and he says, "I dwell in the midst of those with unclean lips." That idea of dwelling in the midst can have a positive meaning. God wanted to dwell in the midst of Israel, didn't he? That was the whole point of the temple. But it can also have a very negative meaning, as is the case here, because Isaiah has been preaching against these people. Isaiah has been pronouncing woes against these people, and now, as God's before him, he says, I'm one of these people. Isaiah needed to realize something about himself. He needed to realize that the preacher has a ways to go too. And God, in very great terms, is letting that be known.
So then, as we think about all of this, God doesn't leave Isaiah in that situation, after he pronounces his woe, verse six tells us, "one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." God wanted Isaiah to realize what's going on. He wanted him to understand the deal. He wanted him to understand that just because you're God's spokesman doesn't mean you're perfect by any means, but he says, here's something else I want you to understand. I can remove your guilt. I can take it away. Of course, we know this is vision, but God often represented by fire, pictures himself here in those coals taken from the altar and touching that man of unclean lips and making his lips clean. And God says, what I've done is I have paid the ransom for you, Isaiah. I've atoned for your sins. And it is then that Isaiah can hear the voice of God. Verse eight says, "the voice of the Lord said, Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" Prophets? Cornerstone. A man referred to throughout the Bible was a man who needed to see his own guilt, man who needed to see his own sin and to get in the right relationship with God.
For the three sermons that I have delivered this week, we've been tying it to this particular theme, and that's being holy, as God is holy. And as we look at this section of Isaiah, maybe it's not the first section that comes to mind when we think about holiness, but maybe it needs to be. Because what we're seeing in all of this, from the words to Israel to, from the words of Isaiah to Israel, from the words that Isaiah says about himself, we're seeing what needs to change when we come to terms with what this means for us. So, as we stand in the presence of the Almighty God, what God is wanting us to understand is what he wanted, Isaiah to understand, and that is holiness belongs solely to him. He is the one who is holy. No one else. There is no other God, no is no other being, there is no human that's ever going to rival him. He alone is holy. And I believe that helps us when we hear this phrase, be holy as God is holy because it's a reminder to us that one cannot be holy until you are one with God. And we don't have to go mystic on this. We don't have to start talking about climbing to the top of some mountain, though God had a lot of mountain moments in the Bible, for sure. it's not going into the wilderness to live by ourselves. In fact, the apostle Paul tells us how to do it. He says this to the Corinthians in chapter 12. First Corinthians, verse 12, "for just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body. Though many are one body so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit." How is it that you and I are going to be holy as God is holy? Well, we've got to, in a sense, become part of God. We've got to be one with Him. How do we do that? Paul says, you're baptized into Jesus Christ. And when you went down in the waters of baptism, you killed off that one that was destined for the courtroom of God to hear woes pronounced against you. To one who is now a part of this body of Christ. What a beautiful thought that when we come up out of the waters of baptism, we are now in the same family as the Apostle Paul. We're in the same family as Peter. We're in the same family as 3000 on the day of Pentecost because we've made the commitment to say, I believe that he can save me, that he can burn away my sin and that though I am a man or woman of unclean lips, I can be pure in him and he gives me His Spirit. And so, here I am now. I am one with God, and what we must realize with that is, for that to happen, atonement has got to take place. That we cannot just simply come in and interview God and say, I kind of like what you say. I'll sign up. It's not that at all. We come to him broken, brused. We come to him a people who are so coated in sin, and we ask for that ransom to be paid.
In the book of Revelation, chapter five and verse nine, speaking of people singing songs, "they sang a new song, saying, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open Its seals for you were slain and by your blood, you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation." Within this grand body, there are Romans, there are Russians, there are Zimbabweans, there are Australians. From all over the globe for the past 2000 years, they have joined with these heavenly host and singing the hymn of being ransomed by the blood of Jesus Christ. And that's how we're added to this body. And so God's holiness becomes our holiness. And thus God says, You be holy as I'm holy. But like Isaiah and like the people of Israel, we've got to realize some things about that. We've got to understand that that's a tall order. And that not only must we make sure that our thoughts are staying pure, we have got to be fully aware that the culture and the peers who are around us can have a significant influence on that holiness. Isaiah preaching away has to stop and say, I'm one of these people. I'm a man of unclean lips, dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And that's certainly a realization that we need to have also. And so again, I'll remind us this dwelling in the midst can be positive. It can be in that idea of the Garden of Eden, the tabernacle, the temple. But it can also have those negative connotations that there are people who, if I'm not careful just by my associations, I'm going to allow their ways to become my ways. And so with that, we understand that what we're seeking to do is to have that dwelling in the midst that's focused on God. Such as Zechariah talks about. That's what we're looking at, and we're allowing nothing to rob us of that.
So, we have to remain cautious, don't we, because the danger is not that one day we're just going to decide to be wicked. I suspect some people do that, but the vast majority don't. It's kind of like Samson. You remember when he's kind of playing this game with Delilah, and it says day by day, she wore him down. That's what can happen. That's what can make us unclean. And we could talk a lot about culture right now, couldn't we? And it'd be time well spent. But tonight, I just want to remind us, this can also happen from fellow travelers on the narrow way, if we're not careful. You know, churches will develop a personality, and that personality really gives you a composite view of a church. And so, sometimes it can be so obvious, you can walk in and you can sense tension with brethren, or you may just sense a total lack of interest in God, or you can sense a group that's on fire for God. What we've got to understand is that when we think about our brethren, but more importantly, when we think about ourselves, if we're not very serious about God's authority, we just say we'll do what we want to do. Or if we say we're not really that big on enthusiastic God-filled worship. Or we say we're not really interested in giving our best in Bible study to our kids and adults. What will happen is we'll begin to be worn down, and what may have once been a fire within us is put out. So, like Isaiah, if we're going to be holy, as God is holy, we got to realize the challenges that are around us, and to understand that my influence is going to impact someone else.
And so, if we're going to be holy as God is holy, then, like he told Israel, we must be a people who are manifesting justice and righteousness. Those are serious terms to God. I'll remind us what he said, "But the Lord of hosts, he's exalted in justice. He shows Himself holy in righteousness." These are big deal ideas to God, and so what he then expects of us is that we treat others who are made in the image of God appropriately. Tell you what, that's hard. That's a hard thing to do. What do you think has been said about Joe Biden and Donald Trump this week? Do you think all Christians have treated them as people made in the image of God? That hits a little too close to home for me, just to be quite honest. Something else that bothers me. Sometimes I'll hear Christians talking about these people that we see pushing, now I'm a Southerner, so I'm going to use the right term, pushing shopping buggies up and down the road. And they're filled up with clothes, just various things. And as I heard one Christian man say not long ago, it's just all a racket. They're just out to get money. Sometimes you'll hear if they'll just get a job. Those things may be true. Things may be true. But I seem to remember somewhere somebody along the way said, you know, Judge not to be not judged for the standard that you use that's what's going to be measured. Back to you, I sure want people to give me the benefit of the doubt, don't you? Discussions like that in a Bible class always go, Well, should we stop? What if there, you know, what if it's dangerous? I'd never encourage anybody to put themselves in danger. But in our civilization where we are, there are so many ways to help. I think that's righteousness.
And I think this also is being a voice for those who've been mistreated. We often think about this in terms of our brethren, and there's a good lesson there, but I don't know that God says that's where the boundaries stop. Been a lot, lot in the news for the past two years on abortion. And when the Supreme Court came out with the decision, they were going to let states decide, the pro life community rejoiced. Question was asked though. So, what are you going to do about it now? And the answer to that question is going to help you determine whether or not you're anti abortion or pro life. That's going to be significant. You going to foster kids? If you aren't able to do that, are you going to help the families who do? My brother in law and sister have started doing that. Two little girls are part of their household. Now, my sister got a little discouraged at first, because she would say people would come up to her and they would say, Oh, I could never do that. I would get so attached to them I could never let them go. And I started thinking, I wonder how many times I've said that over the years. What should be said? What can we do to help? You are so, so, loving to give these kids a home. What about that 16 year old girl who's now going to be a mama? What are you going to do for her? You see how this works? God says, I want you to be the voice. I want, when people are with you, they're hearing my holiness coming through your mouth and your actions. That's what God desires of us.
And let me just conclude this by saying the Lord wants a people holy enough to say, I will do your work no matter what it cost. I stopped reading verse eight about halfway through, I read God's question. "Heard the voice of the Lord say, Whom shall I send and who will go for us." And I said, Lord, could you give me the details of what you're thinking about here. Could you tell me what I'm going to be expected to do, what that's going to cost? Give me some time to think about it. A man who was of unclean lips atoned for and the guilt removed. Said, Here am I send me. It's a great old hymn, isn't it, that we sing about that that's very evangelistic? But it's certainly not limited to evangelism. Whatever, however, whenever, wherever, you can use me, use me, and I'll go. And he says, Lord, how long you want to keep it up? And God says, till the cities are laid waste. In other words, you're going to know. And Isaiah took that commission, and he gave it his life. Because he was holy as God was holy. And when you and I do that, what we're doing is, in a very small way, we're helping to fill the earth with the glory of God. Let others see your light so that they can glorify their father in heaven. And when I am holy, as God is holy, wherever I am, I'm going to do good. Doesn't mean I've got to travel halfway around the world. Doesn't mean I've got to do something big and spectacular that everybody sees. But in my little corner, I'm going to brighten it up. That's practical holiness. That's being what God wants us to be.
So, with all of that said, there's only one way to this holiness. We've seen that tonight. Isaiah could understand it, but we can understand it so much better because we see that completed plan of God laid out the ransom paid by the blood of a perfect savior who said, This is what I'm willing to do to bring you to dwell with us. As the book of Revelation ends, it kind of pulls the garden imagery and the city imagery into this big picture. And I always kind of picture it. You go through this garden, and there's the city, and if you want to throw in a little of the Gospel of John, there's the Lord's house in the city, in the garden, there's not a one of us who will go in through the back door. Because for a people who have taken the challenge to be holy as God is holy, it'll be a ticker tape parade. You did it, good and faithful servant, welcome home. I don't know tonight who has not yet accepted that glorious invitation, but I hope tonight it'll hit you like it hit Isaiah, that at this moment in time I need to confess what I am, and I need to throw myself on the mercy of God. And then let God do his work to take away your sins in the waters of baptism, and then say to him, Here am I send me. If you need to respond to His invitation, you can come as we sing.
