Isaiah's Commission

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Good morning. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here this day. We are in our series, Untangling Christmas, and this week I did untangle the Christmas lights. It wasn't that bad. I don't know why. Of course, I did throw out some. They weren't working again. I still, you know, and I think we talked about this, manufactured obsolescence. So, why can't we make a string of lights that actually works more than three or four years? I don't get it, right? But anyways, it wasn't that bad. I don't know how the season has been for you so far. Often, Christmas gets very tangled up with all sorts of things. It's just the schedules and the calendaring and the parties and the expectations and the traffic in Southwest Florida. We have avoided shopping, at least at the malls, and I think that might be smart. But it's also the tangle of our emotions and our griefs and our losses over the last few years and personal issues. You name it, there's so much that comes up. This is a difficult time of the year for many people as well, even in the midst of a lot of joy. And what's so sad, so ironic, so counterintuitive, the first Christmas was all about untangling the mess the world got into in the first place. Jesus enters into this world, into the tangled mess, the sinew and the sin of this world, in such a way as to take it on himself, figure out how to untangle all of our contorted and knotted lives, and bring to us peace and joy. And the question is how we can experience more of that, what Christ did that first Christmas. As we were starting to consider planning, you know, we do plan our sermons and series here. At least we try, you know. It was like coming to the Christmas season, what is it that we need to hear? Where are we getting? And I thought, the prophet Isaiah amazes me. And so we're looking at just the first 12 chapters of the prophet Isaiah through this period of Advent and Christmas. And we're not preaching on every one, but I would ask you to consider the challenge of reading through Isaiah 1 through 12. It's kind of a whole section, some people think it is, some commentators believe it's kind of a literary section, maybe the first, quote, chapter of the book, if you want to put it that way, or first section of the book. And in it are many of the famous prophecies that always come up in those Sunday school pageants, when you have Christmas pageants as a kid, you know, for unto us a child is born, and a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and a light has dawned, you know, that type of stuff. But it's in the midst of a very tangled and difficult political system and situation for Israel, and specifically for Judah. And that's what you find out when you start reading the Bible, actually, is how God speaks, not in kind of abstract, above it all, it speaks into the context of the real world that we live in. And the greatest hope comes in the midst of some of the greatest difficulties when God speaks. So today, we're in what's considered maybe the hinge, the center section, the center passage that takes Isaiah 1 through 5, and then turns to 7 through 12. And that is what's called the call of Isaiah and Isaiah 6. We're reading the whole chapter. Often, I've heard pastors preach on it, and they just kind of cut off at a certain point in this chapter, because, well, it's the nice part. We get to the difficult call part, where Isaiah is told, yeah, it's not going to work out. And they kind of don't. So we're going to read the whole thing right now. Now, you can follow along. The Bible notes are up, right, Kathy? She's really good at going to her phone and going to this YouVersionoftheBible app. It's free. And then going to Events under the More button. And if you've got your location, it just shows up. If you don't have your location on, just type in the zip, and it will show up. If you're at home right now, you can do it there, too. It's amazing, the Internet, right? It's all so confused. Anyway, so you can follow along with this. But we're going to read now Isaiah 6, 1 through 13. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seating 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, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is filled with His glory. And the foundations of the threshold 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 flew to me, having in his hands a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched m...