The Wild Call

Good morning. My name is James Sutton. I'm the associate pastor here at Christ the King. Our senior pastor Jeff Bradford had a son get married just last night, and so he is not here today. Congratulations to Garrison and Leah.

We are doing a series on the book of Deuteronomy, but we're going to hit pause on that this morning.

Launching a New Series

About a year ago we started a thing here at CTK. Jeff came to me and said, "James, you're a grown person now. I think you should start doing your own series, and there's a book in the Bible that has your name on it. So why don't you do a sermon series on the book of James?"

So last year we had James on James, which was a very fun sermon series for me to preach—not just being in the lineup of whatever Jeff was giving me. But there are pluses and minuses to this. One of the pluses of just preaching whatever series Jeff is preaching is I don't have to think a lot about what I'm preaching. He just gives me a passage and I get up and preach it, and it goes well sometimes. But coming up with your own series—that's a lot more work. I don't really like that part of the trade-off. But it is great to reflect on that and think about it, and it's a bit more involved as a preaching process.

So last time he picked the book of James, but this time he said to me as he came back from sabbatical, "James, now it's time for you to pick your own series. What series would you like to do?"

I said, "Well Jeff, I'm really busy this week. Let me get back to you in a couple weeks."

So I took a couple weeks to think about it and to pray about it. It's really hard to think about what a congregation needs to hear and what passages will I take them to. I spent a lot of time thinking about that and wrestling with it. Here's where I landed.

I had gotten the sense from many of you that there's tension in the Christian world about how we speak as Christians—how we speak prophetically. I got that sense because many of you remember about eight months ago I went on a medical leave of absence because of struggles with insomnia. Part of my healing process has been getting off the news. I don't read controversial articles and things like that, but my wife lets me know when catastrophic events are coming. Just from talking to all of you, I've gotten this sense that there's tension: Are we to be bold and big? Are we to be relational? Are we to be direct? How do we speak in?

So I started to think, well, there's this entire set of books in the Bible that's about that. They're called prophets, and they all point to the great prophet Jesus Christ. I thought, that would be a really great series if we looked at the biblical prophets and from that gained a sense of what it looks like to be Christlike as we engage in our prophetic call as a church.

Our Prophetic Calling

You do know that we're called to be prophets, right? A lot of times Christians don't think about that, but Joel 2 talked about that. Joel himself, a prophet in the Old Testament, said that one day God was going to pour out His Spirit on all flesh—young, old, men, women—all of them would speak the word of the Lord. Peter keyed in on that at Pentecost in Acts 2.

When he came out and they started preaching, everybody goes like, "Those guys are drunk." Peter said, "No, no, no. We're not drunk. This is the fulfillment of Joel 2. We're actually speaking the Word of God to you. We're pointing you to Christ. We're telling you about the covenant."

That's what prophets are. They're covenantal attorneys, basically—not fortune tellers. They're people who negotiate the terms of the covenant with God's people. That's what Peter was doing. He was saying, "I'm telling you about a new covenant. There's a new relationship through Jesus Christ," and that's what we're called to do.

So I told Jeff, "Alright, I got a great idea. Let's do a series on the prophets. We'll call it something about prophets."

We started workshopping it and I started looking at the prophets and I immediately regretted this. And I'm still not certain about it. I'm a little nervous, honestly.

Because you think about the prophets, they're nuts. Right? If one of you guys comes to me and says, "Pastor, I've met a girl. She's wildly unfaithful. I know she's wildly unfaithful. She's cheated on me with everyone and I believe God has called me to marry her. Will you do our pastoral counseling?" You know how miserable that would be for me? How hard that would be and how many problems like that's going to create down the road? But that's one of the prophets. That's Hosea.

Or what about this one? What if one of you came to me and said, "Hey, I have a really great Sunday school class that I would like to teach. It's going to take three years and I want to do it entirely naked." That's Isaiah. That would cause so much problems for me. We would probably lose the use of this building.

Or this—you know, Peter, my son, just joined the church. We now have four in youth group. What if some of the youth in our church were making fun of a bald person, and that person called female bears out of the woods to maul our youth? I don't think I could afford that kind of ER bill. We have four of them.

So Jeff and I talked about it and we decided to call the series "Prophets Gone Wild." We're going to look at the prophets in the hopes that they can help ground us—as ungrounded as they seem—in what it looks like for us to speak as prophetic believers in this day and age. It seems crazy, almost as crazy as they are. So let's pray and ask that somehow I don't lose my job and God uses this in our church.

Lord Jesus, you were the wildest prophet of all and you call us to do wild things. And Lord, I confess that as I get up here to speak from your word about your prophets and about you, I'm nervous because I don't think we have a clue about how to do this well. I am worried that we will misinterpret things and that we will apply them wrongly and that things will go all wrong. But Lord, you have promised and you have shown again and again that you work through people who are full of fault, full of sin, full of brokenness, and you bring good things out of that. So Lord, we ask you to do that again with this series. As we look at prophets, Lord, would you help us to see you and become more like you? We pray this in your name. Amen.

The Calling of Isaiah

Alright. Our passage for this morning is about the guy who preached naked and how he was called into ministry. So this is Isaiah 6:1-13. We'll read it together.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the Seraphim. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face, 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." And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called. And the house was filled with smoke.

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."

Then one of the Seraphim came to me, having in his hand a burning coal, which 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 forgiven."

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."

And he said, "Go and say to this people, 'Hear and hear, but do not understand. See and see, but do not perceive.' Make the heart of his people fat and their ears heavy and shut 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 cities lie waste without inhabitant and houses without men and the land is utterly desolate. And the Lord removes men far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again and like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled, the holy seed is its stump."

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. — Isaiah 6:1-13

Alright. I want to look at three parts of this passage. First, I want to look at the wild throne. I want to look at the wild calling and cleansing of Isaiah. And I want to look at the wild definition of success that we see here. So those are our three points if you're taking notes: the throne; the calling and cleansing, that's one point; and then the wild definition of success.

So we begin this passage with a reference to King Uzziah. If you're not familiar with King Uzziah, you can find him in the book of Chronicles, which is one of the more riveting books of the Bible. It chronicles all of the different kings and oftentimes it just reads very dryly.

Uzziah was essentially a good king for about fifty years. Then one day he walks into the temple and assumes the role of a priest. He thinks, "I'm a really good king and I'm going to burn incense to God." That's not something he's supposed to do as king—that's the priest's role. But he does it anyway, and he gets leprosy and is isolated until he dies. That's all you get in Chronicles about Uzziah.

This passage is framed with this happening at the year of his death. We're getting a very clear picture that God really cares about his worship and coming into the throne room of God is not something that's particularly safe. That sets the stage for what happens with Isaiah. He shows up at the temple and one commentator said this—and I love this—he showed up at the temple and the last thing he ever expected happened. He actually met God.

You can relate to that, right? How often do you come to church and think, "Okay, I'm going to be thrust into a really dangerous environment where angels are flying, using four of their wings to cover their eyes and their feet, and the rest just to look awesome and fly. They're going to be screaming in worship and God's going to be there in all of His glory and that's going to be really dangerous"? Did you think that would happen this morning? It has in some sense. But often we come and expect to go through the liturgy, go through the motions, and then go home and have lunch and maybe talk about the sermon and probably critique the elements of worship and what we liked and didn't like. "That song was so repetitive. 'Holy, holy, holy.' Why didn't you just say it once? Let's move on to something a little bit more theologically deep." That's our experience of worship, and that was Isaiah's as well. But this time, it's impressed upon him the reality of what he's doing. He is before the throne of God and God is there.

He issues his first prophecy. This is what amazes me. He says,

Woe unto me for I am unclean, and I am a people from a people of unclean lips.

That is prophetic language. He's not just going, "Oh darn," or worse. He's not just reflecting on, "I am going to die." Though that's certainly happening. He's certainly got Uzziah in mind, and he's certainly aware of the risk he's facing. But the language—"woe unto me"—woes throughout the Bible are prophetic statements of judgment. He's essentially pronouncing judgment upon himself.

There are two things going on here. One, he is very much afraid for his life. And two, he's looking at the beauty, the splendor, and the majesty of God. Then he looks at himself and goes, "I've got to go. I'm ruining this. My uncleanness is marring something that is so perfect and so beautiful. This has got to stop." His concern is equally for his life, but also for the worship of God. His first prophecy is against himself.

I think that's a very important thing for us to consider when we think about speaking into the world—that our speaking in doesn't begin with our authority, our greatness, or our glory. It begins with us before the throne of God being undone by who He is, and by the absolute, utter, mind-blowing otherness of what it would look like for us to be involved in anything good that He's doing. That's where Isaiah begins.

The call takes place at this wild throne and it begins with brokenness. It begins with us prophesying to ourselves first, recognizing our unworthiness to go and do anything on behalf of this incredible and amazing God. I want to come back to that at the end of this sermon, but hold on to that. That's our first point: the wild throne of God.

The Wild Cleansing and Calling

Secondly, let's look at the wild cleansing and calling. Isaiah's there. He's issued this judgment upon himself. The next thing that should happen is he should die. He should be struck dead. He should be removed from the throne room so that the perfect worship of God could be maintained. In fact, he's even saying that's what should happen. And yet that's not what happens.

Instead, God by His grace brings an angel who comes and gets a coal and puts it in Isaiah's mouth. That is very symbolic and very clear from the passage what that's symbolizing: your guilt is being removed. You're being cleansed. We have a picture here of sanctification—the part of our salvation that we don't like to talk about. We love to talk about justification, right?

But here it's not really talked about so much that Isaiah gets to stay as much as it's talked about what happens to him because he's staying. Justification is we get to stay in the throne room and we get to worship this amazing God whose image blows our mind. But our sanctification is that we get transformed. We get changed. And the image of that here is a very painful one. Imagine just going home and you know, honey for lunch today instead of deli. Let's just have a burning coal. Because I want to experience the cleansing power of God. Nobody does that. Nobody wants that.

We don't like talking about our sanctification because it's painful and challenging and hard. And yet this is what we get a picture of. And Isaiah sees it as a good thing. Notice how little he complains about it. If God shows up in my life and puts a burning coal in my mouth, I'm going to hear about it once I'm able to tell you. But Isaiah's just kind of like, okay. Yeah. Change me. I want to be changed. I want to belong here. And that's a picture of the prophetic drive that I think we need when we think about speaking in.

Our goal of speaking truth to others ought to be rooted in and foundationally grounded upon our desire to be more and more like Christ. To belong in the throne room. To actually fit with what God is doing. Not so much our agendas about what we want to see changed in the world or what we don't like, but more about us fitting in the throne room where we want to be and long to be.

The Call

Then notice the call. God goes, "So hey, who am I going to send?" It almost seems like he needs somebody, doesn't it? It's like, who are we going to send? I'm at a loss. Like, who am I going to send to speak to my people? And it's very clearly the case that he doesn't need anyone. He's surrounded by angels. The Hebrew word for angel means messenger. He's surrounded by people with six wings that could go and take his message. He doesn't need Isaiah. That's totally disregarding the fact that God Himself, when He speaks, things come into being. It's not like He's got a quiet voice that's not really powerful. God can speak for Himself. He does not need us. He does not need the angels. He does not need Isaiah. And yet, miraculously, He invites him in.

That's what's happening here. It's not so much that God is at a loss and in need. He's graciously let Isaiah stay in the worship place, sanctified him, and now he's graciously sending him. I think that's another thing that we need to think about when we think about our call to speak in. It's not something that God needs us for. God is not desperate for us to get on Twitter and Facebook and let the world know what they need to know. He is capable of doing that all on his own. But he calls us corporately and together to go and speak into a world, and that's an incredible privilege, an incredible honor, an incredible opportunity. He not only saves us, but brings us into the family business of spreading the message of salvation. Wow.

Now, it seems like that's an incredible thing until you keep reading in the passage. Isaiah gets called and he's really excited about it. He says, God says, "Whom shall I send?" And Isaiah, freshly cauterized, says, "Here I am, send me." He's super excited about it, pumped about it. And then you get this sad trombone ending.

Go, say to this people: "Hear and hear, but do not understand; see and see, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people fat, their ears heavy," etcetera. — Isaiah 6

He basically says, "Hey, congratulations, you got the job. Get out there and preach to all those people, none of whom will listen to you." I thought this was going to be good, God. I was going to get to go and amazing things would happen. What's going on?

It's almost as if God is calling Isaiah not so much to reach the people, but to reach and engage Him. God wants Isaiah to see the longing of God's heart and the rejection that the people have given to Him. It's not that He doesn't want Isaiah to care about whether or not people listen. It's actually the exact opposite. He really wants them to care because he really cares. And he wants him to see the sadness and the hardship that comes with that.

Several years ago, there was a pandemic. I'm sure you heard of it. I remember we were at West Street in the warehouse and we were preaching to a congregation that had grown and swelled. The Sunday before COVID shut us down, we had 540 people in attendance. It was really an electric environment. I loved preaching. And then the week after that, we had two people in attendance and a camera. And it was so depressing and so hard.

I mean the shift was just so dramatic and fast. Then there was all this angst about what was going on politically with our country. Were we masking? Were we not masking? What about race? All the different things. And we were all up in arms about this and we were all kind of engaged in this conversation.

I remember reading at the time someone had done a study of pastors and it said fifty percent of pastors are thinking about quitting right now. This was during COVID. And I said fifty? That's low. All the ones I know are thinking about quitting right now. Like we didn't get into this to talk to cameras and argue with people about different views on masks. We wanted to really change the world and save the world and this feels like death and dying.

And a friend of mine asked me, because we were all kind of forming support groups at the time. We would call each other pastors and ask what are you doing to try and use Zoom to have a Bible study? Stuff like that. And somebody said, well, how are things going at CTK? And I remember saying this. I said, well, you know, ministry used to be a lot of fun. And now it looks like the Bible said it would look like. It looks like I'm dying to myself every day. And it's really hard. And I don't even know if anything that I'm doing is having any kind of impact. It's miserable.

Go and speak and nobody will listen.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be Isaiah? I mean his whole life was that. Look at any of the other prophets. I mean Jeremiah. Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet. They didn't listen to him and when they did listen to him, they got mad at him and threw him in wells for example. Right? Look at any of the other prophets. They were all miserable.

And you know, I think sometimes we think like the measure of our success and whether or not we're actually doing the things that God wants us to do is the numbers. Where's the 540 people? Whose life have I changed? Where's the impact? And oftentimes I think that God wants us to see that a bigger mission field than out there is the one in here. It's the landscape of our heart that He's trying to reach—to help us see through that process of just how much He cares for us. I think that suffering gets us there.

I learned that eight months ago. I remember at one point, I was hanging out with a bunch of different people in the time that I was on my medical leave and they were all healthy and, you know, reasonably compared to me. And they had lots of different ideas on how I could get better. And I got really sick of those people. Some of you are here. I love you. You're great. I mean, you really gave me some good advice, but I didn't want to hear it. And so I started hanging out with the people in our church that were really suffering because I knew where they were because this is my job. So I just started hanging out with all these people who were really in a lot of intense pain.

And somebody came to me and said, Hey, look, you're supposed to be on leave. You're not supposed to be hanging out with those suffering people. Right? Like stop working. And I said, No, you don't understand. They're working. Like I'm going and meeting with them because it's the people that are suffering the most intensely. Oftentimes they have the clearest line of sight to Jesus. The worldly things, the success that often clouds that, that gets in the way of that, that helps you miss the throne room—like that stuff gets stripped away, doesn't it? When you're really in the throes of it. It's those people who are preaching the gospel to me. I needed the health stuff too, guys. So thank you. I'm not being dismissive of that. But that was worship—going where all of the worldly success had been stripped away and all we had collectively was Jesus together.

The Prophetic Call

Why do you think Isaiah did what he did after having this experience? What kind of thing do you think he saw in that throne room that made him go, I don't care how miserable my life is going to be for the rest of it. I just want more of that throne room. He saw the lamb. He saw the glory of God in the triune, holy, holy, holy, Father, Son, and Spirit sense.

And brothers and sisters through Jesus Christ, we have too. I think that our prophetic message will be empowered and be better if we spend a little bit more time thinking about fixing our eyes on the heavenly realms instead of looking around and seeing all the things that are wrong. It's more nuance than that. This is a 10 part sermon series. So listen. If you think I'm not saying everything, trust me. We'll get there.

But have we lost our sense of awe of who Jesus is? You know, this is my sense. And again, I don't listen to the news, so you tell me if I'm wrong. But I know this for a fact. I know that Americans now view regular church attendance as twice a month. That's regular. That didn't used to be regular. Right? Most Christians are once a month.

It seems that our interest in worship is diminishing in this country. And yet, it does seem like there's a lot of us that feel very comfortable speaking on behalf of the Lord in the public sphere. Like, I got lots to say in Jesus's name. But when it comes to actually going and falling before the throne of Jesus, I don't know if I have time for that. That's what it seems like to me. Am I wrong?

What would it look like for us to recapture some of the majesty of who God is? And instead of our voice out into the culture being about fixing all the things that's wrong out there, it becomes more an extension of that worship. Like going and just telling people about how amazing the throne room is. That's what Isaiah was called to do. God let me in. He gave me a coal. I got to stay. I'm working in the family business. Can you believe this?

I think our prophetic voice should look more like worship. I think that's the lesson that Isaiah's call has for us. And that's what I hope that we can start to do as a church as we continue to look at prophets. I think there's a lot more to what we'll find, but I think that's a good starting place. It's where Isaiah started, and I think it's where we should start.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, you are so beautiful. And the love that you displayed for us on the cross is so amazing. And heavenly Father, you are so powerful and so majestic. And Spirit, I don't know how you do what you do, but you unify and you bring us together and you bring us to the Father and you bring us to the Son. And Lord God, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of your glory. Lord, help us to see that. Help us to be grounded in it and rooted in it. Help us to want more of it and help us to long to sing your praises loudly, clearly, so that the whole world can hear. We pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.