Bless the Lord. So the scene you get in those first seven verses where Isaiah is, by the power of God, allowed to see something that, again, so rare, so rare an event, so rare an occasion that man would see this and still then be able to live. You can recall when Moses had that encounter there at the burning bush, and he was certain that he would die. You can recall, again, many times of the times where you hear of men in this kind of a situation, their response is, I'm done, I'm finished. How can I, as unholy as I am, remain in this kind of holiness? How can I stand in this presence knowing that I have this kind of wretched sin upon me? How can these lips give praise to God who is worthy of worship and holy worship at that? Because it's required that that would be the kind of worship that God would receive. Otherwise, there is no worship to be given to him. And so you can you can you can understand Isaiah's circumstance. He sees himself. He knows the wretchedness of his own being. And here, seeing the holiness of God that has filled the entirety of the temple, it's it's it's so consuming and he's awestruck by it. Again, he's not struck. In fear with the angels, He's struck with fear because he's been in the presence of Almighty God. Well, then we have in verse number 8 through 12 this conversation. Really, it goes all the way through verse 13. But as I shared with you earlier, I'm going to use verse 13 and move this as a transition toward and maybe bridging the gap of the two chapters together in the coming weeks. But from verses 8 through 12, we have this what would otherwise be a very peculiar kind of a conversation between God and Isaiah. Now an unfortunate thing is that usually the preaching of this text ends with the first line of verse 9. So verse 8 and the very first portion of verse 9 is usually as far as the normal preaching goes with the text. That's why perhaps as you were reading or hearing and you're listening to the reading of this, wait a minute, that seems like a really odd thing for God to tell Isaiah. I mean, first of all, you have the Lord, and as you're looking at the written word, you would see this more with the written word than you would with the hearing of the word. And in our English translation from the original language of Hebrew, that the translators bring this daunting task over to the written language. How do we say these things so that people who speak the English language can understand these things? And so the translators do this thing with the writing here. This is not a normal English law or written part of the grammar where you put in all caps the word LORD, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Many of you have heard this before and last week I reminded you of it. That's the translator's attempt to show you and me that this means Jehovah or Yahweh. This means the Hebrew God, the living God, the God that is separate and different than every other God that man has ever invented. This God is not by the invention of man. This is a God who created man. So it's radically different. So when you're reading your English translation of the word that's been translated to us, you'll see many times that word LORD with all caps, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Know this, that that's the translator's flag for you. This is a very unique, proper name that we're giving here. The other one is, and we see it in verse 8, where the first letter of the word LORD is capitalized and the others are lowercase. Again, it's the translator's attempt to communicate to us something in the written word. And that is this title of Yahweh, this title of Jehovah, as sovereign. In the Hebrew, it would be Adonai. It would be this word that says, this Almighty God, His sovereign ruler over everything of the heavens and the earth, everything that is above the earth and under the earth, every dimension of all realities, this sovereign Jehovah sovereignly rules. He is Adonai of all dimensions of the human, the physical and the spiritual. And so that's this conversation that is happening between Isaiah and Jehovah. Isaiah makes this identification. He says, I heard a voice. Not just any voice. This voice, as soon as it began speaking, I knew exactly who it was. I heard the voice of the Lord. I heard the voice of Sovereign. God, I heard the voice of Adonai. And he's saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? So that question should not cause any heartburn for us. It's not God wringing his hand. We know this to be true of conversations that God will have or that are recorded for us by the power of the Holy Spirit given to man. This would be what we would call a rhetorical kind of a question. God is not concerned about how He's going to send word. He's really giving Isaiah the moment, which would be the same way that God worked with Moses. There's a lot of parallels between this conversation with Isaiah as with conversations between God and Moses as well. You know, you can even recall that there's one moment where God is ready to strike the entirety of the nation of Israel from the face of the earth. And if you're reading it, you might think, well, Moses persuaded God not to do that, but in all reality, what God is essentially doing is testing, where is Moses in this picture? Is Moses waiting for his moment to be known by all of the known world as the great deliverer of the nation of Israel? Or, have I given the work of this message to the right servant? Not that God, again, is worried, is He the right guy, but it's for Moses' impact that Moses would stand up and say, oh no, God, if you do this, what will the other nations of the world say about you? It's clear that Moses got it. This is the same kind of a conversation and the unfolding of it in a very similar kind of a manner. Here you have God Himself saying, Whom shall I send? Knowing full well that Isaiah is in the presence. He's seeing this and he's hearing this conversation. He's hearing these angels saying, Holy, holy, holy. And he's hearing these angels talking about the glory of God filling the whole earth. And in this, then, Isaiah hears the voice of his sovereign, of the Lord God Almighty. And what would you do? Just for consideration's sake, what would you do? You're hearing God say, whom shall I send? Who will go for it? You're there present and you know, you've already made a confession. I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people who are just like me. We're filthy, we're wretched. And you hear God saying, who's going to go for us? What would that do to you? How would that sit upon your ears? Well, before we even get to Isaiah's answer and what appears to be his eagerness to answer this, know that just in passing by here, this is not the main point of the text, but how can you walk through a piece of text like this with a reference to the Trinity and not stop and make mention about the Trinity? Again, similar kind of language that is used in the Hebrew. The Hebrew language affords itself this kind of language of the Trinity. It's very similar when you're reading Genesis chapter 1. And you hear this singular plural kind of... Our English language doesn't have this kind of a pronoun. And so whenever we bring it over into the English, you get a singular and a plural together. So you have there in verse number 8, the Lord God Almighty Himself saying in the singular case, whom shall I send? And then He finishes His question with the plurality. Again, this is something unique that the Hebrew language affords that our English doesn't, which is why it sounds and comes across in such a way. But whom shall I, whom shall we send? This isn't just majestic language. I was in a conversation with a friend of mine years ago in a foreign country where I was talking to him and conversating with him about the differences between the Bible and the Koran and the Book of Mormon and how in all of these supposed holy scriptures, there is this majestic kind of language. The way that a king, whenever he writes his decree, he might say it in the plural case, he's meaning himself. This isn't like that. This is so uniquely different in its original language that this isn't just majestic language where a king is speaking with pomp and circumstance by the way he's speaking. This is so specific. that it is actually saying, whom shall I, me, singular me, whom shall I send? If I were in the community and I were speaking to a group of people and I might say, we, I would say us. You and I. We gather at this location. Meaning many of us. It wouldn't work for me in the English language whenever someone stops me in the community and we have dialogue and I begin to speak about my church and I speak in the plural case. It just doesn't work this way. It would be representative that this is where we gather, but I wouldn't be speaking just for myself. In English, I would be speaking for all of us. And you're good Baptists, you know that nobody speaks for us. except for us. And that's just an inside joke. Only the Baptist got it. The others are just quietly laughing inside. I'm sitting here going, that's a dumb joke. Don't ever try that one again. So this is this, that in the singular case when Jehovah says I, it is representative, it is accurate, grammatically proper that he says I. And then it is grammatically accurate when he says, whom shall go for us? Whom else would he be referring to? Is he somehow suggesting who's going to go for me and these angels, these seraphim who are here? No. It's not the case. Again, you'll notice in the written form of the text. Now, not all translations do this, so don't feel like you've been left out if your translation does not capitalize the U on us. This is a privilege or a prerogative of most translators. Not all. The word us is capitalized, helping the English reader know that the original language has something specific about it that says us. And so, again, because our English language doesn't afford this, we'd have to go and see what the scholarly world would say about this. And it's clear that this is the plurality of the Godhead, the plurality of the personhood, this singularness of God. You and I are not polytheists like the pagans in Isaiah's day. We're not polytheists where we believe that eventually, in hard work and good effort, you too could become a god yourself, a plurality or a polytheistic, a many, multiple gods. This is not this. In its original language, it is clear this is still, when it says and it speaks of the plurality here, it is strangeness as it is, it is singular. So it's quite beautiful. So, we'll read through this, and it's not the main point of the text, but how can you walk through that and not be struck by the beauty of the language itself in that it speaks of this unique nature of the Godhead, Yahweh, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, not separate beings, but Supernaturally and uniquely holy and sovereign and majestic indeed, but spiritual altogether as this one inseparable Godhead, the Trinity. And so Isaiah's response to hearing this, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Isaiah perhaps is answering the way you and I would answer. the moment you're in this kind of a scene where you see the glory of God filling the whole of the temple and His glory even as the angels are saying, holy, holy, holy for the Lord God Almighty or His glory, God's glory fills the whole earth. And then you hear this one who is being praised and worshipped saying, who here will go for me? It's more of a recruiting announcement rather than a ringing of my hands, oh no, who is left? If you're undone, I've got nobody. It's not that at all. It is who here is ready to go? Who among the unclean is ready to be saved, redeemed, and declared clean, and now go and be my messenger of this gospel? This is why among many reasons why Isaiah is known to Matthew Henry as the Old Testament evangelist. Because here he is, he's ready to answer, he's ready to say, I'll go. In verse number 9, there's so much more than just the first line of verse number 9. He, meaning Yahweh, Jehovah, Adonai, he said, Go and tell this people. And actually, in most cases when this is used, it's usually used in the calling out of a missionary force to go, to leave here and take the gospel somewhere else. And so even a lot of times it just even ends at the word go. But this is so much different. This is actually A beautiful Christmas message in. Inside of a message where God is going to harden the hearts of the people. This is that kind of strangeness. Again, you remember Moses just just for the sake of comparison, you remember Moses. He's receiving the word from God to go and demand Pharaoh to let God's people go. You know, God didn't need to send Moses to Pharaoh to demand that God let his people go. God could have just released his people. God gives a message to a man who, in that conversation, you remember Moses stuttering his way through the conversation, if you will. Moses identifies himself as a man who has some kind of a speech impediment or at least a nervous tick in his language. He said, well, who's going to listen to me? I'm a country boy like me. I want to go to the... to the Pharaoh whom I was raised up in his house, and I'm going to go and tell him to let your people go?" You could almost see Moses swallowing hard on this matter. But nonetheless, he's willing to go. And as he goes, you know that what's about to happen, because we've read this story so many times of Moses, that it is God who will actually harden the heart of Pharaoh. And every time Moses goes, Pharaoh's heart gets harder and harder and harder, bent against, stubborn and stiff-necked. But Moses stands for us as an example, and perhaps he's even standing for Isaiah as an example of faithfulness. Because Isaiah's call here is not to a fruitful work. Isaiah's work here is to a faithful work. Because what's to follow here, nobody signs up for if they're looking for their own glory. Nobody signs up to go on this mission trip knowing that at the end of this mission trip is going to be difficult, hard, complex, suffering, perhaps physically difficult, even to yourself. Nobody's going to sign up for this because, see, generally whenever this kind of a message is given to the calling out of especially the Western church to go and be a missionary somewhere, we usually have to cloak it as some kind of a glorified vacation. And let's tag the word mission trip onto it because somehow we Westerners will be more willing to invest our money in going if that's the end result. We get to come home with great pictures. We get to come home with great gifts we bought. We get to come home with a great suntan because of the places we went. And we come home basically heralded as the hero who's gone. But this is so peculiarly different. I wonder if the Western Church, if we have anything to learn from this. I think we do. It's somewhat of a rhetorical, even in that question. Is there anything at all for us to learn here from Isaiah's response to the Lord? Well, let's look at God's first answer to Isaiah. It is not just simply, then go. It actually has some really complicated things that he says with it. So there's the first question in verse eight, whom shall I send, who will go for us? And then you have Isaiah's response, here, here am I, send me. And so God responds back to Isaiah and he says, go and tell this people. So notice, first of all, he's saying, go and tell this people, specific people. to a people who bear the name of Yahweh. You go and tell this people. So Isaiah's target audience is very clear. He's not just going somewhere and randomly telling everybody. Everyone that he finds he will speak to. Everyone that hears him he will preach to. But Isaiah's target audience is a people who bear the name Yahweh. And He's going to say to them, go and tell this people. This is what Isaiah is supposed to tell God's people. He's supposed to go and preach to them, keep on listening, but do not perceive. You're stopping. Maybe we haven't even finished the message that he has. So what kind of message is this? You're going to go and you're going to preach to everybody, hey, keep on listening, but you're not going to get it. But keep on listening, but you're not going to get it. Keep on listening, but you will not perceive this. Keep on looking, but you will not understand. Verse 10. He still has this bigger picture upon this simple statement, this two-line statement in verse number 9. Keep on listening, but do not perceive. Keep on looking, but do not understand. And then he gives some further instructions to Isaiah. 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, and understand with their hearts, and return and be healed. Have you ever read these words? This is a most peculiar message. So wouldn't you think that what God would want would be for man to hear? for man to see, for man to repent and to turn. But Isaiah's mission here is a mission of hardening hearts. Now, church, we must be careful upon this. I don't think that this is our duty now to go out and that what we're looking at here is our carte blanche. announcement to all of the world to go out from here and tell them, oh, you guys are just a bunch of dummies, you're not going to get it if I tell you anyway. That's not our message. This is Isaiah's message to a specific people in a specific time because of the hardening that God has been doing of their own hearts. Because, ideally and practically, because of their idolatry. Because of their spiritual adultery. that God is going to send a messenger to them now, and He's going to say, you keep on listening, but you will not perceive. Keep on looking, but you will not understand. And Almighty God is communicating to Isaiah, you're going to render, this is essentially going to be the work of your message. It's going to render the hearts of this people insensitive. It's going to dull their ears and dim their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed. Stop and consider this again. The audience would have seen themselves as a spiritual people. But clearly, something has gone wrong with their spirituality. They've become arrogant. They've become prideful. They've become a people who are self-sufficient. They've gone to the point where they're only using the name of God. They're really taking the Lord's name in vain. which brings greater breadth to this commandment, you shall not take the Lord's name in vain. It's not just a simple use of God's word as a curse word. I think it does include that, but I think many times we think that I've not violated that commandment because I've never used God's or I've stopped using God's name as a curse word. But it's so much more than this. Many who see themselves as spiritual have taken the name Yahweh, taken the name God, they've received the name of Jesus as their Savior, and yet nothing about them looks holy. Thereby, other observations and by investigations of the individual, they really are not different at all. They look as much like the unconverted as the unconverted do. The only difference is they're wearing a t-shirt that says, I love Jesus. What is wrong with this? Speak to them from their arrogant, prideful condition. You keep presenting yourself like this, but you don't get it. You keep even looking as though you're searching in your own ways. You're not searching Scripture, but you're searching in a spiritual light that is dim and dark, and in that, you do not understand that you are giving your devotion to another. While you're saying you're married to God, your actions are saying, I'm married to myself and the world. You're really saying, I say I love God, but your actions are saying, I hate God. Think of this in the marriage sense. where adultery has been committed at some level. You're probably not willing to say, or the offending party is not willing to say that it's an expression of hatred, but it is obviously an action that is opposed and against to the one you've devoted yourself to. You're bearing this name, you're carrying this name, and you've taken and you've given it to another. This is the people of Israel. specifically the southern kingdom, Judah, that Isaiah is speaking to. While he's saying these things, the northern kinsmen are on the verge of being taken captive by the Assyrians because they've done the very same thing. They have the language of being spiritual, but they are not spiritual at all. And so it actually is ultimately an act of mercy that God would harden their hearts. Now, you're going to have to stay with the whole of this message that Isaiah is given from the Lord to understand this. It wasn't until Pharaoh's heart was completely hardened that he was finally broken. You remember, it's at the plague of the death angel. where death strikes everyone whose homes is not covered by the blood of the lamb on the doorpost. And it's at the grieving moment of Pharaoh's heart that Pharaoh finally concedes that he's broken. Now, I'm not suggesting that Pharaoh repented and turned to God. I'm just saying he was broken. It's clear he really didn't repent because he eventually comes back to his own hardened heart. And he pursues God's people to take them back, but he can see that what God is doing in the hardening is he's preparing to break them. This is God's work from this difficult message from Isaiah to the nation of Israel. They need to be hardened so I can break them. And when I break them, I will put them back together. When I crush them, I will pick them back up. When I crush them like dust back to the earth, I will gather them unto Myself and I will breathe upon them yet again. So this message of hardening, this mission that God has given to Isaiah, It's certainly not the way that man would begin to the pursuit of speaking to a self-righteous spiritual people. The approach is quite the opposite of how we would typically want to address it. We would want to go in and touch the human needs of all. And in doing so, we never really bring them face to face with God. But what needs to happen here is spiritually, they need to see that they have They've walked away from God. And so God sends Isaiah out on this mission, go and tell this people, keep on listening, but do not perceive. Keep on looking, but do not understand. Well, verse 11, you see Isaiah. Perhaps I don't want to bring Isaiah down to my level, but I'm thinking, OK, how long? How long before I get to tell them something they want to hear? How long shall I tell them this hard news before I get to tell them something different? How long shall I tell them this? And God's answer is as striking as His message. God tells Isaiah, you should speak this until cities are devastated and without inhabitant. Houses are without people and the land is utterly desolate. The Lord has removed men far away and forsaken places are many in the midst of the land." So that's God's answer to Isaiah about, okay, I'm supposed to go and tell these people to keep listening, but do not perceive, keep looking, but do not understand. And the reason you want that to happen is because you want to harden their hearts. Okay, God, so how long shall I do it? Basically, as long as there are people living, you go and give them this message. As long as there are inhabitants in the land, you do this work. So you can see that what God has called Isaiah to is a work of faithfulness. He's given him a mission of faithfulness. He's not given him a mission that's going to make him popular. It's arguable inside of the scope of Isaiah's messages. He certainly has the gospel. He certainly preaches good news to men. But it's messages like this that you walk away and you wonder if church history is accurate. We don't know really how Isaiah died. We don't know that specifically from Scripture. We do have the aid of church history, and at least if church history is of this accurate level that we could see, Isaiah is eventually ordered to be sawn in two with a wooden saw. It's because Isaiah was faithful. You don't get sawed in two by telling people God loves you just the way you are. So there's no need to repent. There's no need to change. There's no need to come into subjection under the authority of the Supreme Being of all of the universe. You just go ahead and ignore His laws. You go ahead and ignore His ways. I know, God wouldn't have made you this way if He didn't want you to live out your life like this. That kind of message makes you popular. That kind of message puts you on the best-selling list of the New York Times. That kind of message makes you the primary person on the speaking circuit around the nation to gather in the masses, the boatloads of people, and come and pat them on the back and tell them, you're okay, you just go ahead and keep on living like you are. God loves you just the way you are. Isaiah's message. is a gospel message. And it's preparing the heart to be crushed. It's preparing the heart for a transplant from a heart of clay to a heart of flesh. God's preparing a people then to give His name that they will be completely devoted to. See, Isaiah's message certainly had an impact upon the society. But it is essentially the kind of message that rocks self-righteous people to sleep. Because they don't want to hear this. They say, well, I'll do it because I know I'm bearing the name of Jesus. I've got to do these certain things to keep my appearances up. I've got to look like this. I've got to give occasionally. I've got to give my appearances to look as though I'm one. But essentially, this kind of crazy preaching is just going to rock me to sleep, and it's going to put me out. It's going to outrage the self-righteous. It's going to make them angry. Are you calling me? Out? Are you saying I'm the one who's not understanding of God? I mean, obviously, I'm preaching His love to everyone I speak to, and I'm not going to do anything to ruffle their feathers, but it will outrage them. It will cause them to be incited with outrage when you speak of the sovereign holiness, exclusivity of Jesus Christ. It will create outrage in the hearts of the self-righteous. This kind of message will exasperate the self-righteous. Eventually, they'll get tired of it. They'll eventually replace this messenger with one who will come and tickle their ears, the New Testament tells us. They will not put up with sound doctrines. They will not put up with a word that is accurate and true. They will not even endure a word from God. And so they will replace the messenger of God with a messenger of the devil. And He'll come in and He will tell them exactly what they want to hear. Isaiah's preaching, it'll rock the self-righteous into a fatal sleep. It will incite them into an outraged fit of anger. It will exasperate them until they replace the messenger with one who will give them what they want. But some will hear this word And it will be a word of mercy. It will be a word that their ears have been prepared to hear. It will be a work that will call out those who belong to God. And they will repent of their sins. And they will, in believing, turn and follow and obey the Lord God Almighty. Isaiah's work, his calling from the beginning, is a call to faithfulness. not a call to fruitfulness. God's if we're going to use the word of God to give background or give support to the outcome of our work, we get into really messy things, because many times in our day, a successful church is shown by its massive numbers and that that somehow is translated into being fruitful. And that is not necessarily fruitful. It is, in cases where truth is not being heralded, it is a representation of deprived wickedness. It is an indication that the self-righteous are not going to put up with sound doctrines any longer, and they're going to flock to massive gatherings where someone will speak to them of how it's okay for them to remain in their current sin. Now. Let us let me not walk away from here, given the idea that just because a church gathers a large gathering, that they're all self-righteous, pompous, arrogant churches filled by personalities that are egotistical. As we also live in a day where there is some sound preaching yet in the land and people do respond. The Lord has given his church some faithful heralders of the gospel in massive pockets of the population of the nation. Large gatherings happen while truthful, faithful preaching of the word of God is taking place. But let's be certain that we do not gauge the effectiveness of the word of God by mere appearances of gathered masses alone. It must be governed by how faithful is the work. Otherwise, how are we ever going to be able to justify? How could William Carey ever justify any mission-sending agency in his day that it was worth keeping him in India when he couldn't report of a single convert Not just for one year. Not just for two years. Not even for three years. Now, a mission agency today might be willing to put up with lack of fruit or lack of evidence of the work in the field for a few years. But with William Carey, not even after a decade goes by and he has no converts to come back and muster up the church to keep him in the mission field. Not only one decade passes, but two decades pass. Twenty years go by and he can't come back to any mission agency in Europe or in America and say, keep sending, keep investing in the work. Because look, I can report to you the masses. He couldn't do it. Thirty years go by, William Carey has no converts to say and give evidence to the effectiveness of the investment of God's people to keep the Gospel in India. But I can tell you today, the unfolding evidence and fruitfulness of conversion of saints that are still happening today will be off of the bedrock of a faithful William Carey. who was faithful to take the gospel. That is the work that Isaiah answered as well. Isaiah never got to come home to his home church and say, you'll never guess what happened when I finished preaching the other day. Now there are times, you've read your American history, you've read your church history, there are times when George Whitefield would, because there was no place in the city big enough to gather all the people that wanted to hear him preach, he'd go outside the city and ten, sometimes reported as many as 20,000 people would show up to hear him preach the gospel. We have evidence in our own American history, Jonathan Edwards in the colonial America days, the pre-existing of our nation in the first Great Awakening, when Jonathan Edwards would go from church to church to preach, and he would preach in these places, and while he's preaching, people fall under heavy conviction, and they, even by the very words of his preaching, see themselves slipping into eternal hell, and they begin to cry out to God to save them. We have evidence of that. But again, that's not the litmus test for us. The work here is faithful. Will you be faithful, church? Will you be faithful to your neighbors? Will you be faithful to your co-workers? That whenever you have those gloriously God-ordained occasions to speak truth, that you will? I know some friends of mine, in doing so, have cost them their jobs. I know individuals who have suffered in this present world because of their being not hard and not stern and mean toward people, lovingly, compassionately honest with people. When there is a people who bear the name of Christ, or they say they bear the name of Christ, and they hear the truth, they cannot stand in the same light that they're hearing and still be seen as a godly person. And so they must do something about this light that is showing and exposing them as a fraud. So they have to crush it, they have to hide it, they have to remove it. This is still the case. You will see in Isaiah chapter 9, we'll even read this text this evening, during our evening Christmas Eve service, which speaks about a day when there was a great darkness. Isaiah will eventually speak in chapter 7 of Immanuel, who represents this name Immanuel as God with us. It's in chapter 9. From Isaiah's word, 750 years later, before the Messiah actually is birthed. It is a dark day for the nation of Israel. They're back in their homeland, but they're being governed by a foreign government yet again. And in that dim, lit day, God sends a bright light. And I'm not talking about a star sitting over a manger. He clothes himself in the flesh of men, and he comes among us, and he saves us. Now again, the language of salvation is lost if you don't first of all know you're a wretched sinner in need of being saved. And really, in all reality, the whole message of Jesus is completely lost if you do not see Him as your Savior. Otherwise, He's just another story among the many stories of humanity. This is uniquely different, where God Himself clothes, he orders his son, his only begotten son, to come in the form of a man, as Paul the Apostle in Philippians 2 would describe to us. And he would come in the form of a bondservant. He would come to serve men. He would come not, and we read the life of Jesus, he certainly saved people, he certainly healed people, he certainly, he patted them on the back, but he never patted them on the back and said, now keep on living the way he once did. Go and sin no more. Repent. Go and tell. The message of Jesus is the same message that Isaiah is receiving on this day. You go. And as you go, be certain that you speak truth. Now, the uniqueness of this is because of a people who have grown stubborn and stiff-necked in their ways, and they needed this kind of a message. The greatest caution for us today is that we would think we are different, we're better than this day. I plead with you today, as you consider what this day, what this weekend, what this season represents, that you not just be carried away by the fluffiness of it, but that you be captured by the glory of the King of glory himself. And that that would cause joy to resonate in your households. That this day, In your house, as your family gathers, that the joy of God loving a people that he would send his only begotten son to save them from their wretched sin. Oh, may you turn to him today. Repent of your sins and turn to Christ. Will you do that? Do not remain, do not remain in your stubborn, your stiff necked ways. Do not be among those who, when they hear this kind of news, they're lulled to sleep. Do not be among those who are outraged and filled with anger. Do not be like those who are exasperated. Be like those filled by the glory of God and His mercy. Turn to Him today. Oh, Heavenly Father, we thank you for the occasion. We do bless you. What a hard word you gave to your prophet. May it stand as an encouragement to us in our day. May it stand as an example that our work is a faithful work. Lord, guard us from judging what is effective on man's standards, but rather what is effective on yours, and that is a work of faithfulness. Well, God, in this day as it unfolds and as tomorrow comes about and in your timing, you will. We certainly need your comfort. There are memories that flood through us in seasons like this. Heartache, memories of loved ones, these are real experiences and real moments, and we'll ask for your comfort to come upon us all. Lord, may we not remain in that place, but may we, because your countenance has fallen upon us, may we pick up our heads and look to where our help comes from. Our help comes from you, the maker of heaven and earth. Our help comes from you, our Redeemer, our Savior. Our help does not come in our ability to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. Our help comes because we've been crushed Our help comes because we've been broken. Our help comes because our hearts are like stone. And we need You to transplant inside of us a spiritual heart of flesh that beats once again. Oh God, may Your glory be seen among Your people. For Your glory and for Your pleasure. Save us from ourselves, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.