A (23:27)
You know, I think, too, just going along with what you're saying, sometimes people would say, you know what? God is love. But you'll always have a small view of God's love if you have a diminished view of God's holiness. God's holiness is essential to understanding his love, because in understanding his holiness, we recognize our unworthiness. And in recognizing our unworthiness, then we receive that, understand that we're the recipients of love we don't deserve. Now, in Isaiah 6. 4, we continue. It says, the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of the king, who's calling out while the temple is filling with smoke. And I want to move through this because I want to. You just see what we're doing in John 12. But when God speaks, the thresholds of the heavens shake. I mean, have you ever been in an earthquake? Isaiah is immediately on his knees. Sometimes you see these stories of people that met God. They died and went to heaven, and then they came back and they write a book about it. Listen, there's a uniform response in God's Word to people that stood before God. Habakkuk 3 says, his knees begin to knock. John falls on his face like a dead man. And Isaiah, the most righteous man in Israel, pronounces a curse on himself and says, woe is me. A woe is what prophets would use to pronounce a curse on a sinful nation. And here is the most righteous man in Israel, the prophet of God, pronouncing a curse on his own life. Because when he stands before God and recognizes who he is, he says, I'm done. I'm disintegrated. I'd rather die. He's absolutely petrified. Such is the effect for every individual in Scripture of standing in the presence of God. And this is a massive problem for Isaiah. And, you know, long before James writes chapter three of his epistle, Isaiah understands something about the human condition. He says, I am a man of unclean lips. Why does he say that? Well, our lips are the expressions of our heart. Jesus says, out of the heart, the mouth speaks. And he says, I live among a people of unclean lips. And he says, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Now he's just petrified. And then it says, then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And again, at this point, Isaiah is just aware of his finitude, the sinfulness of his own soul. He wants to die. Verse 7 says, he touched my mouth with it and said, behold, this has touched your lips, and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven. I mean, this is a gift, right? Isaiah, in the moment that he understands his sin so distinctively, against the backdrop of the holiness of God, the angel comes to him, touches his lips and says, behold, your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven. This is a tremendous gift. And then it's against this backdrop, we come to the kind of like the verse people reference for, like missions night at church, totally. Verse 8. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And then I said, here I am. Send me. And he said, go and tell this people. Keep on. Okay, so verse eight, here I am. Send me. A lot of times we. We forget what comes after that. He says, 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. Now turn with me to John 12. It's against this passage that John is going to draw a connection for us. And I want to set the scene in John 12. Jesus enters into the city on what we know as Palm Sunday, and it says that they remained unbelieving, the Pharisees. And it says this in John 12:37. And you need to see the connection here, 12:37. But though he that's Jesus had performed so many, so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah, the prophet which he had spoke. Lord, who has believed our report? We just read this in Isaiah 6. And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this reason, they could not believe. For Isaiah said, again, are here. He has blinded their eyes and has hardened their heart so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart and be converted and I heal them. Now watch this. It says these things Isaiah said, because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Now the question is, who's him? John is saying that Isaiah spoke of him. Who's him? Jesus. Bottom line. To cut to the chase here, the most exalted vision in the Old Testament of the king of the universe sitting on a throne, surrounded by fiercely loyal angelic seraphim warriors is that of a carpenter In John chapter 12, who is about to be slaughtered. And in this passage, it says, they keep on persisting in unbelief. And the whole chapter 12, this is right after the resurrection of Lazarus. It's a week before Jesus is slaughtered. Palm Sunday. Here comes the king of the universe with a plot against his life and a price on his head. He's regarded as a common criminal. And here comes the author of life, and with a plan to put him to death. And now, going back to your word, we're going to juxtapose the two texts, Isaiah 6 and John 12. In Isaiah 6, his audience is Seraphim, warriors. And in John 12, when John says Isaiah spoke of him, here's Jesus, here's his audience. Here it's people lining the street, right? You got 2.5 million Jews that take that from Josephus saying that there were 256,000 lambs one year at the Passover, you multiply that by 10, you get the rough estimates. There are two and a half million Jews.
