I invite you to turn to Isaiah chapter 6. This has to be one of my favorite passages in the entire Old Testament. And it's one of the passages that gives us a very wonderful and glorious view of Christ in the Old Testament. And it's a chapter where you could preach a whole series of sermons. You could actually do a good few number of months worth of sermons from this chapter. And we're going to look at the whole chapter this morning. But don't worry, we're not going to dig very deeply into it, I just want to pull out three points in terms of application for you, and we'll go through it quite quickly. Because what I want to focus on this morning is, I don't know about in your Bibles, but just in my Bible, just before verse 8, it says there's a little uninspired heading that's been put there as Isaiah's commission from the Lord. There's a passage about Isaiah being called by God into the ministry, and it's because you are all either in or Hopefully one day looking forward to being in full-time ministry. There's certain lessons and certain things we can learn from this passage this morning. Lessons appropriate for you to apply now, looking forward. So let's begin. And as I said, I'm not going to cover every single verse, but I want to highlight three aspects or three views that are helpful when considering full-time ministry. And the first, first thing is you need to have a right view of God. Take a look at verses one through to four. 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. 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. And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. What a wonderful picture of the throne room of God, wouldn't you agree? But in a way, this passage actually begins rather negatively with the words, in the year the king Uzziah died. Now, for most people, this sentence probably doesn't mean too much, but the impact on the nation of Judah would have been something like if this afternoon, the people living in England had to find out that Queen Elizabeth had died. It would be something that would cripple the nation. I remember years ago, I was in England, and some of you will be too young to remember this, or even remember the person, Lady Diana, the previous wife of Prince Charles. The day that she died, everything stopped in England. The street corners were just covered with flowers and I remember waking up that morning and my gran wondering, where's the newspaper? Where's our morning paper? Because for her, that was like her Bible. She had to read the morning newspaper. Even the first newspaper of the day stopped because Princess Diana had been killed in a car accident. It shook the nation. And in a way for the people of Judah, this would have been a similar kind of thing because King Uzziah had been a king for 52 years. And it was a time of a lot of prosperity and peace. But now, King Uzziah had died. We don't quite know the time frame. Maybe this vision Uzziah had was before his death or maybe it was after, we're not sure. But we can just imagine that kind of time frame is more or less when Uzziah was called into the ministry. It was a very dark and bleak time for the nation of Judah. Maybe people were asking questions of like, how can we go on? Some may have said there's no hope. What's the point? Now we may not have had a leader like King Uzziah die today in our generation, but a lot of people are asking the same questions today in 2019. Look at the state of the world and look at the state of the nation and people are saying it's hopeless. What's the point? Even people in the ministry, Christians are asking the same questions. So it's in the midst of this negativity that you also are maybe being called into the ministry. But Uzziah received a vision of the Lord. He says there in verse 1 that he saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. Here as I saying in the midst of all of this, this bleakness, I have seen the Lord. I have seen the ultimate ruler. I have seen the one in charge. So what if the king of 52 years is dead? The ultimate ruler, I've seen him and he's still on his throne. God's not pacing backwards and forwards wondering what to do. Oh, no, not what you're going to do. There's no king. He knows what he's going to do. He's seated. He's not conferring with his angels on how to help the individual people with their problems. No, he's seated on his throne. He's not walking the earth trying to find food to feed the hungry. No, he's seated on his throne high and lifted up. He's seated because he's in charge. He's confident in his charge. He's not concerned. He's in charge. He is sovereign. And he knows it. Think about the biggest worry that you have right now. It could be a test in the next lesson. It could be an assignment that was due this morning and you haven't finished it yet. It could be your Greek grammar or your parsing of Hebrew nouns and verbs and whatever else you have to do. That could be your biggest worry today. Or maybe you have something even more serious. The health of a loved one, the death of a loved one. I don't know what challenges you're facing and what challenges you may already have faced. The biggest challenges you can think of. But guess what? Doesn't matter how you feel right now or how big that challenge is, God is on His throne. God is still in control. The worries of your children, God is in control. Worries concerning this beautiful country, God is in control. Going into the ministry or if you already are in the ministry, the worries of every single person in your congregation, God is in control. So you can rest assured that when you're in the ministry, there's nothing that you have to deal with that God isn't in control. He is seated on his throne. But there's more to this. Isaiah continues, he says that the train of his robe fills the temple. In Revelation chapter four, there's another picture of God's throne room where we we see all of God's creation is worshiping him. And then he's saying that these angels and the creation are singing the exact same words we have here in verse three. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. And he put the two pictures together, and you have the train of God's robe filling the temple, which is a picture of his authority. And we have all of his creation and revelation worshiping him. Put the two together. Here we have all of creation, therefore is under his control. Not a single thing is out of his control. For everything that there is a circle and you've got nothing left outside of it. He's in control of it all. The lilies of the field, the animals, the birds of the air, the spirit that falls to the ground. He's in control of all of it. And yes, he's in control of you and every single person in your congregation. There's not a thing that is out of God's control. This may be the only thing that you take away with you this morning. Just remembering that God is in control. Despite what you're facing. No matter where you are, no matter what has happened. No matter what you're going to encounter in the future, God is seated on his throne in his rightful place of glory, and he's in control. But Isaiah doesn't end there. In verse two, he continues by saying, above him, that is, above the Lord on his throne, stood the seraphim. Seraphim are the angels in God's throne room who serve God at his command. They have six wings. Two, they're covering their faces, preventing themselves from even seeing the glory of God. With two, they're covering their feet and essentially covering up their shame. And with two, that they're flying in acts of service. For those of you who enjoy Hebrew, the words that are used here for covered, flew, and called in our passage are all continuous verbs. See, these angels aren't just flying and doing this on the day that Isaiah saw it. They were doing it then, and they continue to do it. And as we see in Revelation chapter 4, John sees that they're still going to be doing it in the future. This is a continual action. They're continually flying, continually covering themselves, and they're continually singing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. But notice, importantly, that they're calling God holy. They're not singing, love, love, love is God. They're not singing merciful, merciful, merciful. They're singing holy, holy, holy. And in the Bible, what happens when you have two words or three words repeated after one another, it's meaning that it's either very important or it's perfection. So here in this context, they're saying God is holy, holy, holy. This is something extremely important. In other words, God doesn't just have a form of holiness that, oh yes, he's holy. He ticks these boxes. He's not just holier than you are. Even though both of those are true, He is absolutely holy. Perfect holiness. There's nothing holier than Him. And this also, being repeated three times, implies this is very important. This is the only attribute of God in the entire Bible where we have it repeated three times after each other. Jesus did a similar kind of thing when He was teaching, remember? He would say, truly, truly. In other words, he was saying that what I'm saying now isn't just a truth, it is the truth. This is something you need to take note of. This is something very important. I think when we structure our systematic theology, if we had to put any of the attributes of God above any other, maybe holiness should be that one, because that's how it's reflected in the Bible. Now you need, as I said at the beginning, you need to have a right view of God. It needs to start with having the right theology. There are too many false prophets in the world today who have a view of God that excludes His holiness. It excludes His sovereignty, that He is in control. Try to give man too much control. They try to, in a way, take God off His throne and put man on the throne. Many teach that God can be manipulated by our prayers, or that when we pray, we're actually giving God permission to act in that way. God's on His throne. He doesn't need the permission. Many teach that God is so loving therefore he's not going to send people to hell. One well-known preacher doesn't even preach on sin. And he stated quite categorically in an interview with Larry King that they don't talk about sin at their church. That everyone is essentially good and therefore they don't need to hear about it. Sin is not in their vocabulary. Brothers and sisters, these are false prophets. They have a completely wrong view of God. They're missing God's holiness completely. Understanding your calling, therefore, has to start here. If you get this wrong, you're going to get so much wrong, if not everything wrong, in your ministry that follows. With Isaiah, God began by showing himself. Before he called him, and from verse 8, he shows him himself. This is who I am. It seems as though for so-called men of God today, they have things backwards. It's as though they say, oh, God's called me to the ministry, so I better go and learn about Him. Rather it should be, this is who God is, and in my response to Him, I'm going into the ministry. You seem to have it the wrong way around. So I want to ask you the question here quite personally, and you need to be honest with yourself. Do you have a right view of God? Do you recognize that He is in control and is perfectly holy? Because as I say, either way, if you get that wrong, you're going to be affecting everything else in ministry from this point on. So how did Isaiah respond to this? Did he say to himself, okay, now I know who God is, let me now go and preach. Well, no, he didn't. Let's carry on. Let's read from verse five to seven, because here we're going to see the second aspect of considering your calling. Verses five to seven. 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 by eyes I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongues 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." Here is our second aspect, our second view we need to have. and that is a repentant view of self. The word woe that Isaiah hears is an exclamation of sorrow, grief, concern, or fear of something that is evil or unpleasant. So in context, Isaiah is saying basically, I'm done for. I have no hope. I see this perfectly holy God in front of me, and when I look at myself, I'm done for. He recognizes this position before God, that of being full of sin. before a perfectly holy God, and therefore he deserves God's judgment. Now I want you to put yourself in Isaiah's shoes for a moment and ask yourself, how would you respond in this situation? Would you respond by saying that you're lost? Would you say, woe is me? Now to be honest, where we are sitting at the moment, I don't think there's actually a correct answer to that question. Because in a way, if we had to say, yes, I would say that, isn't that a little bit of pride? How do we know how we're going to respond before a holy God? It's only by the grace of God that we will respond the way Isaiah did. When we stand before the holy God, what other response should there be? But the truth is, even when one is before God, when one sees the holiness of God, not everybody's going to respond like Isaiah. Listen to the words of the Apostle John in Revelation 6 verses 15 to 17. And the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful and everyone slave and free hit themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is where seated on the throne and from the wrath of the land for the great day of their wrath has come and who can stand. Have you ever heard people say something to the effect of when I get to heaven, I'm going to ask God dot dot dot and they put some other kind of concern or problem they have with God that maybe God's been unfair or you know, God's got to give me an answer for that. When we look at Isaiah's response, we look at what happened here. That is really, really falling short of how we ought to respond when we see the glory of God. Who are we to question him? Who are we to say, God, you need to give me an answer for what you did? God is on the throne, not me. The only correct response we should have should be one that is like Isaiah here. Woe is me, for I am a sinner, and I don't deserve to stand before the King of Kings. In reality, I don't think we'll truly know how we'll respond when we see him face to face until we get there. Whether we'll bow down before him willingly like Isaiah, or whether we'll be forced to our knees because we don't see our state before him. It's only by the grace of God that we will be like Isaiah and recognize. And so I pray that for all of us, we will bow down willingly, that we will recognize who we are without Christ and that we can then be thankful for what Christ has done because we won't be able to stand before him guiltless if it wasn't for the work of Christ. But note to the extent to which he recognizes his sinful position. He states that he's a man of unclean lips, living in a nation of people with unclean lips. Tie this in with the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 15, when he says that what comes out of a person's mouth is what makes him unclean. That what comes out of the mouth is effectively what's coming out of the heart. Therefore, it's the heart that is unclean. So in a way, Isaiah is saying exactly the same thing. He's saying, my mouth is unclean, therefore my heart is unclean. He's not saying this is just an outward appearance of evil. He said, I'm sinful at heart. It's who I am. And when you base it on the rest of the content of the book of Isaiah, I believe that this is what he was saying. He felt this. He realized that his heart is unclean. But more than that, he also realized that the heart of his nation was unclean. You see, sin's not just something that dirty as those on the outside. It comes from the inside out. And then Isaiah repeats the reason why he feels this way. He has seen the Lord, the God Almighty. He's seen this holy one on his throne. He's recognized at the deepest level that he is immensely unclean before a most holy God. Now, thankfully, Isaiah's repentance wasn't in vain at this point. Because how tragic it would be if the story ended here, or at least maybe ended before verse six. And that God may have turned around and said, okay, Zion, now you recognize your sinlessness, go out there and do good works and make sure you become cleaner before I call you into the ministry. No, the Lord sends an angel to him. And he takes a coal from the altar to go and cleanse him. Now these angels are only doing the work of the Lord as the Lord commands. This angel wasn't taking the initiative. All Isaiah had to do was recognize a sinful state and repent, and then the Lord did the cleansing. It's the same when it comes to the gospel. We need to come to him in repentance. And yes, we have to do good works. Yes, we have to make sure we keep ourselves away from evil, but that's not what's going to save us. We're saved by grace through faith. And it's only when we are saved, only when we are truly Christians can then we enter into the ministry. You see, ministry is not for unbelievers. There's unfortunately too many non-Christians standing behind the pulpits today. Some may think that it's possible to treat it as just another job, but that's all it will remain. It's a job. I remember reading a few years ago, there was this minister of the Church of England, and he was very well known with the community that he was in and had been in the ministry like 40, 50 years or something. I don't know how long he was there for. But the press decided to interview him because he was quite well known. And in that interview, he confessed that he wasn't a Christian. That he was actually an atheist. That he'd been preaching for 40, 50 years the gospel behind the pulpit, but he didn't believe a word that he said. The only reason why he became a minister in the Church of England was because it was the easiest job to get and the best paying job at the time. That should never be true of any one of us in this room. for anybody behind the pulpit, in fact. You can only be a minister, you can only really be involved in the ministry if you truly know the Lord. And this is something that again will affect the rest of your ministry if you don't get this right. You have to have a repentant view of self. You have to see how unclean you are before a holy, perfect God. If you have never repented, If you have never recognized that you are a sinner before a holy God, it will seriously affect your ministry. Through the grace of God, Isaiah was cleansed. And as we'll see in a moment in verses 9 to 13, he was then commissioned to do the work of God. And notice where this call comes from. It comes from the altar. It comes from the place where sacrifice is made. Where was the altar for our sacrifice, for our forgiveness? It was the cross. It's only through the cross that we can find true forgiveness, and it's only when we can recognize our sinful state before God and truly repent that we can be saved. So before you take another step in your apparent calling into the ministry, ask yourself two questions. Do I have the right view of God? And do I have a repentant view of self? And if you answer no to either or both of those questions, then unfortunately you're probably not ready to go into the ministry. In fact, I would say you are not ready to go into the ministry. They have to be right before we even consider standing behind a pulpit, ministering to people, counselling people. Folks, ministry is serious business. God takes it seriously in his word and therefore so should we. But there's a third aspect to your calling that is highlighted here in the call of Isaiah. It's seen in the rest of the chapter from verse 8. And that is you have to have a realistic view of ministry. So let's read the rest of the chapter from verse 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. Well, let's stop there for a moment. Isaiah's response here is a little unexpected, isn't it? I don't know about you, but if you ever go and apply for a job or a post somewhere, you want to know what it is you're getting into. Isaiah just said, send me. His only response to seeing who God is and seeing himself and being dealt with, the sin being dealt with, his only response was send me. A bit of a step of faith there. But let's have a look at what follows. And he said, go and say to those people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the hearts of those people dull and their eyes 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. And I said, how long, O Lord? And he said, until cities lie waste without inhabitants and houses without people and 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. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebranth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump." Not a very promising call to ministry, is it? Isaiah, you're going to go out there, you're going to preach, and no one's going to hear you. Now some of you here within the next six months are going to be writing your final exams and, Lord willing, graduating. Something you're probably all looking forward to. At least the graduation part, not the exams. But anyway, imagine now you do finish and you graduate and you go out there looking for a post. And you see a job description for a pastor. And here's how the job description reads. Wanted. A full-time senior pastor for a large congregation in the heart of the nation's capital. Sounds good so far. The job involves preaching to an audience that will sleep through every sermon and ignore everything you say. Many will rebuke you and point out the errors of your theology, even when you're preaching absolute truth. The position also involves door-to-door evangelism and holding crusades for the community, where you will have zero converts. The position is for life and there's no possibility of pension, retirement or resignation. Financial struggles will be an everyday reality with no guarantee of a salary at the end of the month. Your personal life will be scrutinized by all and nothing you do will ever satisfy everyone all of the time. Family relationships will be tested as you sacrifice all your time for your people. Your children may grow up to despise you and your wife may leave you. Successful candidates must have the necessary leadership skills, although most of the people will ignore your leadership and do their own thing anyway. Congregation experiences many trials and tribulations, but they never learn from their experiences. When times get tough for you, support from the congregation will be little to none. Hours of work, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, with no holidays. Now, if you had to read a job description like that, would you apply for the position? Probably not. If anything, you'll probably take it to the labor department to say, this is a breach of labor laws. But the truth is, ask anyone who's been involved in full-time ministry for a long time, and they will tell you that this is actually a very realistic job description. The hours are long. The work is difficult. People will reject you, and there'll be times when you don't feel like continuing. People will be getting degrees in dozology instead of theology, because they'll be sleeping through everything you say and do. But that's reality, folks. It was true for Isaiah, and it's just as true for us today. Now, I don't have time to go into this whole thing here in terms of Isaiah's commission. But when you read these verses, you can't miss the fact that the people were not going to hear or understand Isaiah. That people were going to reject God ultimately, and that their only escape would be the judgment that would come upon them when they would be removed from their land. In short, in the eyes of man, Isaiah, his ministry, would have been a total flop. However, more importantly so, In the eyes of the Lord, he would be highly successful. But Isaiah had to have a realistic expectation of ministry before he started. And the same is true for you. Don't ever think that entering full-time ministry is going to be easy, that you'll make lots of money and be able to afford luxury cars or houses, that you'll have lots of followers and that you'll be adored by many, even by your wife and children. Don't think that it's something you can do when you want to, and that you'll be able to take long vacations and retire like football stars at the age of 35. Because that's not going to happen. Isaiah had to know beforehand what this ministry was going to be like, because if God hadn't told him, and Isaiah went out and did three, four years of preaching, and nobody was hearing and understanding, Isaiah probably would have gone back to God and said, God, you've given me this job to do, but nobody's responding. Don't worry, Isaiah, just carry on. he would have maybe felt like quitting. And many of us will do if we don't have a realistic view of ministry. Things may be easier for some of you, and you may experience many joys and pleasures, but never ever expect it, because it may not be true for you. Remember, as I pointed out at the beginning, no matter what you do experience in your ministry, always remember that God is still in control. See, if you don't get a right view of God, have a right view of God before you even start, you're not going to finish. If you don't have a repentant view of self, you're not going to finish. So therefore I urge you, never ever take your eyes off Christ. Continue to find comfort in his word and constantly come before him in prayer. Ministry life will be tough. There'll be many obstacles and people in your path that will hurt you. People will stab you in the back. People that will tempt you to give up. So keep your eyes on Him. And then the Lord will, when we eventually see each other again in glory, hopefully we'll all be able to testify with the words of Paul, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. But it starts with having the right view of God, a repentant view of self, and a realistic view of ministry. I leave you with that challenge this morning. Let us pray. Oh Lord, ministry is tough. And each one of us here in this room, Lord, in one way or another, have a sense of calling upon our lives to do the work of the ministry. Lord, I pray that we will all keep our eyes on you, that we will all study your word, that we'll all recognize you for who you are so that we have a right view of you. But also, Lord, that we recognize our sinful state before you and repent. And that even, Lord, even when we say it, we'll keep on repenting, we'll keep on confessing our sin before you, knowing that you will forgive us through the cross. But also, Lord, that we have a realistic view of ministry. that when times are tough, when those challenges come against us, that, Lord, we will keep our eyes on you. And that, Lord, we don't go into it with false expectations, but that we understand you are in control and ministry will be as you had called it and designed it to be. We thank you for this opportunity to study. We thank you for this preparation that you're doing in each one of our hearts. And we pray, Lord, it will come to fruition in your name. Amen.