Note: I am indebted to Sermon Central contributor David Ward for much of this sermon. I made some modifications to fit better with the SHIFT series, and to talk about our current crises with the Covid19 pandemic, but otherwise this is David’s work, and I am very thankful for it.
Good morning! Please open your Bibles to Isaiah 6. We are concluding our series called SHIFT this morning. For the past several weeks, we’ve been talking about mindsets in our church and in our individual lives may need to shift in order for us to be the people God wants us to be. We’ve talked about shifting our attitudes, our actions, and our priorities. But the one we’re going to talk about this morning may be the most important one of all. This morning we are going to talk about a paradigm shift.
Now, some of you may not know what it means to have a paradigm shift. “Paradigm” is a weird looking word, but it’s really pretty simple. A paradigm is simply a specific way of looking at the world. It is a set of presuppositions, laws, theories, philosophies that shape your understanding of the world. The world is round. It spins on its axis once every 24 hours. It revolves around the sun once every 365 days. The moon revolves around the earth once every 28 days. Put all these facts together and they form our paradigm for understanding time, seasons, gravity, the ocean and hundreds of other things about life that we don’t even have to think about anymore because our paradigm is stable.
But what happens when our paradigm shifts? When everything we think we know turns out to be wrong?
There is a great scene in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, when world-class paleontologist Allen Grant, who has devoted his life to the study of dinosaurs, suddenly comes face-to-face with real, live prehistoric creatures. Let’s watch what happens: [Show clip]
It is one thing to piece together an image of dinosaurs by picking through fossils and bones. But when he encountered an actual, living, breathing dinosaur, his paradigm shifted. Everything he thought he understood changed.
For many people, spirituality amounts to picking through the artifacts of faith that survive from long ago and far away. We read the stories in the Bible about people encountering God hearing His voice, experiencing his awesome, at times terrible, power. But what if God showed up in our world today? How would it effect you to have a close encounter with God? A God who isn’t an illusion or a pipe dream, but who is real enough to see? How would it affect you to see God for who He really is?
Isaiah chapter 6 gives us just such an encounter. Let’s read this together, and then we will break it down verse by verse. If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word:
6 In 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!”[b]
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.”
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You can be seated.
Pray…
Now, just to set the stage, let me take you back in time to the kingdom of Judah in 740 BC. Israel is doing well economically. Building projects are happening, business is booming, and people are prospering. Militarily, Israel is strong, but they are also at peace. It was a time of military peace and economic prosperity.
So now imagine that Isaiah gets up one morning, he’s drinking his coffee, eating a bagel, and he flips on CNN (that’s Canaan News Network), and there’s breaking news: “KING UZZIAH HAS DIED.” Isaiah’s mouth hung open in disbelief. King Uzziah had ruled for 52 years over Judah. He was one of the better kings of Judah—he did right in the eyes of the Lord. Uzziah was credited with all this economic and military success Israel was enjoying. But now, the king had died.
The First Paradigm Shift: Seeing the World as It Really Is
And this brings us to our first paradigm shift—when we see the world as it really is, and we realize its maybe not so stable and so under control as we thought. Everything is going smoothly, life is good, and then the king up and dies. And suddenly our world is thrown into disarray—we go from calmness to chaos in just a blink. One headline was enough to rock Isaiah’s world.
Now let’s just take out the words “King Uzziah died,” and pick something else off your 2020 Bingo card: In the year of the Pandemic. In the year of murder hornets, flying snakes, and zombie cicadas (all three of those are really a thing. Look it up). In the year [fill in the blank] was elected President. Sometime later this week, some of us, or maybe many of us will awake to find that the person we voted for was not elected president. And our expectation of what the next four years will be like will have shifted.
Or let’s make it personal—Think about times in your personal life when your paradigm shifted.
• In the week I finally made the last payment on my car…
• In the year I finally thought we were in good financial shape …
• Just when I thought we were getting to a good place in our marriage…
So here’s the question: when your paradigm shifts—when the world changes, when your foundation is rocked by the latest diagnosis or the latest cutbacks in your company or the latest election, is your concept of God big enough to handle it?
Many years ago J.B. Phillips wrote an influential little book entitled "Your God is Too Small." The title says it all. Phillips wrote,
Many men and women today are living, often with inner dissatisfaction, without any faith in God at all. This is not because they are particularly wicked or selfish or, as the old-fashioned would say, “godless,” but because they have not found with their adult minds a God big enough to “account for” life, big enough to “fit in with” the new scientific age, big enough to command their highest admiration and respect, and consequently their willing co-operation.
Phillips spends the next 40 pages of the book laying out concepts of God that are too small: The Cosmic Policeman. The Projection of a parent. The kindly old man. The genie in a bottle. The Moral perfectionist. The meek and mild, pale and pasty Galileean that never has a cross word for anyone.
Let’s be honest—some of us still have the image of God we had from the flannelgraphs and teaching pictures of Vacation Bible School. And I would argue that when your paradigm of the world shifts, your concept of God may be too small to handle it.
That’s why the next phrase of verse 1 is so important. In the midst of his discouragement, Isaiah goes to the temple as usual, but this day would be different. Priests prayed, but Isaiah didn’t hear them. People offered sacrifices, but Isaiah didn’t see them. Because, In the year that King Uzziah died, I SAW THE LORD, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. This is The Second Paradigm Shift: Seeing God As He Really Is (v. 1-4)
The images and language used to describe God emphasize:
• His majesty (“seated on a throne”)
• His transcendence (“high and exalted,” “the train of His robe filled the temple,” “the temple was filled with smoke”)
But notice that God Himself is not actually described. I think it’s because Isaiah doesn’t have the words to articulate what he has seen. What the Lord is showing Isaiah is that He is the all-knowing, all-powerful, Almighty God with whom no one can compare!
But Isaiah does describe these angelic beings called seraphim. Look at verses 2-3:
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!”[b]
What on earth are these things? These are six-winged angelic beings created by God to serve in His presence. They are arrayed in the position of servants standing and waiting on a seated master, with their two wings folded downwards, two folded over their faces and two raised in flight.
All three verbs, “covered … covered” and “were flying” express continuous action. The scene is one of constant motion at the King’s divine bidding. They covered their eyes, not their ears, for their task was to receive what the Lord would say, not to look on Him. In covering their feet they disavowed any intention to choose their own path; their intent was to go only as the Lord commanded. Their song is continuous and its theme is the holiness of the Lord and His presence in all His glory in every place on the earth.
Now notice what they are saying to one another: “Holy holy holy”
Ancient Hebrew used repetition to express superlatives or to indicate totality. Only here do we find threefold repetition. Not “mighty, mighty, mighty” or “loving, loving, loving,” but "holy, holy, holy." Holiness is supremely the truth about God, and His holiness is in itself so far beyond human thought that a “super-superlative” has to be invented to express it. God’s name is described by the adjective “holy” in the Old Testament more than all the other descriptors put together.
When God appeared in the Temple, the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke (smoke is a symbol of God’s presence) If you find worship boring, someone’s missing something! If we walk out of a worship service the same as when we walked in, I’m not sure we’ve truly worshipped, because true worship will shake your temple! You’ll know who is truly King.
What is Isaiah’s reaction to seeing this King, seeing God for who He is? [READ v.5]
Isaiah doesn’t say, “Wow! That’s neat!” He doesn’t say, “I should write a song about this.” Isaiah says, “Uh oh.” If you’ve seen God for who He is, your first response was “uh oh.” For if God is holy, our efforts to be like Him are undone; if God is holy, our trivial idols are revealed to be worth less than nothing; if God is holy, the ground has been yanked out from under our feet and we are left hanging in the air, completely vulnerable.
The Third Paradigm Shift: Seeing Ourselves as we Really Are
And then three things happen …
1. We are convicted of our sin.
What's the natural response when you've seen God? You're convicted of sin. "Woe is me, for I am undone." The closer I walk with God, the more quickly I feel my sin and realize how much I need God.
Isaiah was completely undone, ruined like Humpty Dumpty. So what does he do? He confesses! That's the second thing that happens:
2. We confess our sin
Isaiah knew he was ruined because he was “a man of unclean lips.” Having just heard the golden tones of the seraphim, Isaiah knows that his lips, having been used to praise himself, to put others down, and generally serve his own ends, could never be used in such holy service. And what’s more, he lived among an entire culture of sinful people with unclean lips. And he saw nothing even remotely unclean about the Lord.
This is a sign that you’ve seen God for who He is. Not only have you said, “uh oh,” but your heart grieves for those around you, people you know who haven’t seen God, and who are immersed in their unclean practices and unclean culture.
There’s a story like this in the New Testament, too. When Peter first meets Jesus in Luke 5, he’s been out all night fishing, hasn’t caught anything, and he’s pulling his boat up on shore. He sees Jesus teaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus asks to borrow his boat and push out a little bit so he can be seen and heard better. Afterwards, Jesus rewards Peter with a miraculous catch of fish. And when Peter sees it, he falls on his knees and says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
When we encounter God in His holiness, majesty, and power, the proper response is “Woe,” not wow.
But then, something amazing happens: Look at verse 6:
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.”
Isaiah underestimates the grace of God. God has not given him this vision in order to annihilate him, and He does not bring the fire in order to destroy the offending lips. The seraphim places the coal on Isaiah’s unclean lips.
When we are convicted of sin (Woe is me), and we confess our sin (I am a man of unclean lips), then God cleanses us of our sin.
God touches Isaiah right at his point of need. But we cannot enjoy God’s cleansing without confession.
The NT equivalent of the coal from the altar is the Cross of Jesus Christ. Those who have been branded by the cross have been touched by the seraphim’s coal. People who come to the cross are people who have seen God. Some have an “uh oh” experience and run away; others run to the cross and cling to Christ, because they knew they were ruined, undone, in need of help. Christ’s cross has cleansed us!
• James 5:16 “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”
• 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
You know, it would be easy to end the sermon here and say, Oh, that’s nice. See the Lord. When your world is rocked, come to church, see the Lord, and you’ll feel better. But if that is all you get from this sermon, then I have not done my job. You will have missed the most important part of the message this morning. And that is:
When the Paradigm changes, our behavior must change (v. 8)
[READ v.8]
God was able to take a shattered man and send him into ministry.
God was able to take a sinful man and turn him into a prophet.
God took a man with a dirty mouth and made him His spokesman.
This is the moment, the turning point for Isaiah. From this point forward, he was an unstoppable force for God. His job wasn’t easy—his job was to go to a people whose hearts were hard, who didn’t want to see God or hear what He had to say to them. Yet day after day, year after year, Isaiah hung in with his calling, his mission. Why? Because a vision of God leads to mission for God.
As would be true of Israel, God brings this terrifying vision into the Isaiah’s life in order that, having seen the truth of God and of himself and having received the gracious provision of cleansing fire, he would be sent into the world. A VISION OF GOD LEADS TO MISSION FOR GOD
I want to share with you one more paradigm shift. A few years ago I came across an article about the hidden messages in well-designed logos. One of the examples they had was the FedEx logo.
How many of you see the arrow in the FedEx logo? And now that you see it, you can’t unsee it, can you. You will look at the logo and remember that FedEx sends stuff out.
Every day FedEx sends over four million packages to valued customers. FedEx’s delivery routes cover every U.S. street and service more than 220 countries. In order to send well, FedEx has over 170,000 employees, 675 aircrafts, 50,000 ground transportation vehicles, and 1,800 office locations. It’s a bit mysterious, but somehow FedEx has figured out a way for customers to ship packages within a one day turnaround. If FedEx knows anything—they know how to send well!
Our church needs to learn how to send well. God may not be all too concerned about packages being delivered on time, but the scriptures make it clear that God desires all people to receive the message of salvation and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:3-4). God operates with a deep conviction that everyone should have the ability to send and receive eternal hope! What is God’s distribution plan? Simply put—God’s people! It’s us! It's you! It's me! People who are willing to respond to God’s call with “Here I am. Send me!” Across the hall or across the street or around the world, “Lord, send me.”
