The Greatness of God (Isaiah 6) - Part 1

Well again, it's a great privilege to be here this morning with you. And we're going to begin again in the book of Isaiah. In the book of Isaiah, chapter 6. Starting with verse 1, we'll read again.

In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with a train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings. With two He covered His face, and with two He covered His feet, and with two He flew.

And one called out to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. And the foundation of the thresholds trembled at the voice of Him who called out while the temple was filled with smoke.

Then said I, woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, I thank You for this day, for Your kindness and Your mercy. It's new every morning. For the strength of the blood of Your Son.

It cleanses us from all sin. For His perfect work, His finished work, apart from which no man could stand before You. Father, thank You so much for everything that You've done.

And I pray, Father, for the sake of Your own Son and His bride, that You would help us gain an understanding of who this person is, Jesus Christ. And in knowing Him, to know You, the one true God. Father, help us and we will be helped.

Strengthen us and we will be strengthened. Father, I pray also for our nation, that, Lord, You have hidden Your face from us, and with good reason, Lord. Our sins, our transgressions, our violence, our immorality, one heaped upon the other, Lord, far over our heads.

Lord, in Your wrath, remember mercy. Lord, reveal Yourself to this nation. That they might fear.

That they might kiss the Son and not strive against Him. Not by might or by our wisdom, but by Your Spirit, Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Well, we didn't get very far last night. We got in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw, so the Lord. But the greatest thing that can happen to you is have a clear vision of who God truly is.

Of who God truly is in the person of Christ. And the greatest need in this country is a revelation of God. Of who God is.

Now, the reason why I'm harping on this so much is because it's true. And because as Christians, our witness must be more than God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Our witness must be about God.

Who He is. And what He requires of man. We must learn to not only say things, but we must learn to properly define those things we say.

As I said last night, if you say God is holy, that means very little unless your idea of holiness conforms to that of Scripture. If you tell man he's a sinner, he's liable to agree with everything you say. I am a sinner.

But he's liable to laugh. Because we live in a nation that drinks down iniquity like it was water. That promotes sin, that loves sin, that laughs about sin.

And so if you're going to open your mouth and tell someone about God, you better start learning how to define terms. And explain to them just what these things mean. God loves you.

But who is God? And how is His love manifest? And is there another side? Is there wrath in this New Testament day? Yes. Has God changed? No. Even the text.

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We say that. Yet do you even know what it means? Have you sat down for days just to discern what it means? That small text that was probably one of the first texts you ever memorized in Sunday school.

See there's a danger with the commonality. When we see something over and over and we assume we understand certain things, but we've never endeavored to know them. Now you will spend your strength for so many things.

You will spend your strength to understand so many maybe good things, but compared to eternal things they're trivial. And they mean nothing. And yet to the eternal, to understanding Scripture, to defining terms, upon which your life depends, how much time are you willing to spend? And for you who are parents, all the teaching that you do your children, you want to teach them to be good students, you want to teach them to be athletes, you want to teach them to have success, but in less than 80 years their soul may be in hell.

In all your teaching, do you teach them to know God and to prepare to meet their God? You see, this is either true, all this stuff, or it's nonsense, and we ought to just develop an Epicurean philosophy of eat, drink, for tomorrow we die, just like everybody else. Or it's true. And if it's true, then it disintegrates every idea of reality we have prior to coming to Christ and reconstructs reality so that we think and live a completely different way.

You see, again, because I've only got a few days here, I'm just kind of throwing out some things that are very important before I get to my sermon. But let me just give you an example. You walk up to somebody and say, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Now, you're talking to an American. Self-centered, self-saturated, self-loving American. But I can say the same about every individual in every other part of the world.

That's what a man is. So you walk up to him and you say, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, and he looks at you and goes, What? God loves me? Well, I love me! You say, God loves me? I love me? Yeah, I'll take a God like that. And God has a wonderful... I have a wonderful plan for my life.

And you're saying God's going to jump onto my wagon and go with me and help me accomplish all the dreams I have for me? Well, I'll take a God like that. And then the evangelical minister says, Praise God, another one got in. Another one is saved.

You see how ridiculous it is? And for that reason, 65 to 70% of America is Christian, and yet we're absolutely immoral. Because we're not Christian. And we're not Christian not because this country is gospel-hardened, but because this country is gospel-ignorant.

And it's gospel-ignorant because most of its so-called ministers are gospel-ignorant. And so what must we do? Return to Scripture. But that in itself can be a cliché.

Don't you understand that? Oh, return to Scripture. So let me say this before we get to our sermon. We do not live on an island.

We live in the context of a church that's not just this church in this day, but we have 2,000 years of Christian history. And so if I'm standing here with my Bible and an opposing minister standing over here with his Bible, and I say that I believe this, and he says that he believes another thing, and we both appeal to Scripture. That's what my Bible says.

And how are we going to come to any conclusive evidence with regard to who's right? Well, it may help us to compare ourselves with 2,000 years of Christian history. It may help us to compare ourselves with the men and women that all the evangelical community recognized were the most useful in the kingdom throughout the church age. But if we were to go back and compare ourselves to the Spurgeons and the Edwards and the Reformers and the early Baptists and the Puritans and some of the greatest men and writers of the church, we would discover that we have very little in common.

We do not need new ways to reach new men. We need to go back to the old ways to reach men because they haven't changed. Neither has God.

And so where do we start? We start fundamentally with a correct understanding of God. And then we go from there to a correct understanding of man. And then we go from there to a correct understanding of what God has done for man in the person of His Son Jesus Christ.

But you can do all that, can't you, in just one little track? God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Or here's four spiritual laws or five things God wants you to know. And you've taken this whole glorious enterprise and reduced it down to nothing but a few trite sayings.

And you may say, well, I got saved through those trite sayings. You got saved in spite of them, not because of them. You got saved because God is all-powerful and all-sovereign, and He can take the mess that us preachers put forth and still save people with it.

Now let's go on to look at our text. Again, I've decided that I was going to bring a whole bunch of friends with me this weekend. A lot of the old guys, I'm going to read things about them and I'm going to comment on it.

We started out in the year of King Uzziah's death. Principally here is that we see the whole world convoluting. We see the whole world being turned upside down.

We see no confidence whatsoever in the enterprise of politics or government or men or leadership. We see no hope. But in the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord.

I love the King James Version. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord. In the midst of all this, I saw it.

Isaiah is saying, I'm not living in a fantasy. I look at all the things that are going on among the nations. I look at the terror and the pain and the worry and everything, but I see also the Lord.

The Christian isn't oblivious to all the horrible things going around him, but, the influence of that worldly vision that disturbs the heart is eclipsed by the heavenly vision of God. So in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord. Now, what does he say about the Lord? He says, first of all, that He is sitting on a throne.

Now, there's some very, very important things here. He's seated upon a throne. I like to describe this as the settled sovereignty of God.

The undisturbed, without haste, or the wringing of the hands, sovereignty of God. So many people will say that they will speak forth about God's working in the world today as though God were up on some little paper mache throne with a little tin crown on His head wringing His hands saying, I want to do so much in the world, but I can't get the church to cooperate with me. That is absolute rubbish at its best.

God is doing everything He has decreed to do on this earth. And He's doing it well. If it is said about Him in His incarnate state, He doeth all things well, then know that the one who sits upon the throne is doing all things well.

It is a settled sovereignty. And the more you stop measuring reality based upon what you see horizontally, the more you stop that and transfer your view to God and His settled, concrete sovereignty, the more peace is created in your life. Now again, let me say something that I said last night that is so very important.

The idea of omniscience today is so wrong. It's so wrong. People say, well, God knows everything.

That is true. But how does He know everything? That's where people get messed up. Well, He knows everything because He looked through the corridors of time.

Really? Would someone please show me where that is in Scripture? I have looked all over for these corridors of time and I just can't find them. He looked through the corridors of time and He saw what's coming. Well, if He just saw what's coming, it means He doesn't control it.

Well, of course He doesn't control it, but like a good quarterback, He's able to switch plays around and respond correctly to what He sees coming. Well, that's comforting. God doesn't know everything in the future because He looks into a crystal ball or because He looks down the corridors of time.

He knows the future because He's the author of it. He's the Lord of it. And He is the prime mover, the uncaused cause, the unmoved mover of absolutely everything.

Now, He was sovereign over your life prior to conversion. He was sovereign over your life before you were born. He was sovereign over your life before the foundation of the world.

He will be sovereign over your life until He brings you into glory and His sovereignty there will continue. Yes, you can transgress. Yes, you can sin.

Yes, you can bolt from the herd, but only as far as His sovereignty allows and for His own purpose. You can set your face against God. You can pull at the oars of your boat and row with all your strength until your strength gives out to move yourself away from the will of God.

And after you've totally exhausted every muscle in your back and arms, you will find that you have rowed yourself straight into the will of God. He's sovereign, to say the least. Let's look for just a moment at Daniel 4. Daniel 4. In verse 34, here we have a pagan king with more sense now than many of those who proclaim Jesus Christ today.

He comes out of his lunacy. In verse 34, he says, but at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven. That is a very wise thing to do.

Now, we're not raising our eyes toward heaven in some form of mysticism or meditation, even though we ought to pray and we ought to meditate. But we ought to raise our eyes to heaven through searching out the glories of God in His Word. In His Word.

To know God. To see Him. To raise our eyes toward heaven.

I raised my eyes toward heaven, and my reason returned to me. I saw reality clearly. Now, prior to that, was he seeing reality clearly? He was seeing himself as God.

As the center of His universe. As the One who created this entire empire. Not realizing what Isaiah says in chapter 2. Why regard man when all he is is a nose full of air? At any given time, the best of man, the strongest of man, is nothing more than one nostril full of air.

Because when he blows that out, he doesn't know if he's going to get another. Everything in his life is derived. And so you have these men walking around as though they were self-contained units.

That is totally and completely unrealistic when you realize that every beat of your heart comes from God. Every breath comes from God. And even the supposed atheist who clenches his fist and screams out at the face of God, does so by the power of God.

But when we separate ourselves, and see ourselves as sovereign, and see ourselves as independent, we are lunatics, to say the least. But when we raise our eyes toward heaven, our reason returns to us. I forget which president it was.

He walked out with either his vice president or the secretary of state or something. This was years and years ago. And they walked out at night and they looked up at the stars.

He said, look at the stars. Look at all of them. And the man at his side said, okay.

He said, now do you have everything in perspective about me and you? And what we are? Nothing. The nations are as nothing before Him. Like a drop from a bucket.

Not even a bucket full, but a drop from a bucket. Now, he says this, my reason returned to me and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever. That's the end.

The chief end of man. How do you know when your reason returns to you? When God becomes the epicenter of your life, your thinking, your motivation. That's when you know you have passed from that territory we call a fool to a wise man.

Just with that jump. But it is such a shift in reality. It's unbelievable.

Just imagine for a moment our political system, our educational system, our society. If it raised its eyes towards heaven and its reason returned to it and it praised and honored the Most High, our society as we know it would be transformed in an instant. In an instant.

All the maladies of our country, all the maladies of the world, all the injustices, everything that's going on. What is the cure? There's so many questions. How many answers can we find? There's only one that we need.

Turn your eyes toward heaven. Your reason will be restored to you and you will praise and bless and honor the Most High. And in the Christian life that gets so deviated by trinkets and things and temporal worries and reputations and rankings and all sorts of things, you get in a flutter to the point where you're so confused you don't know whether to go backwards or forwards or sideways.

How can your reason return to you? Lift your eyes toward heaven. Acknowledge God and honor and please and praise Him. Now, he says, for His dominion is an everlasting dominion.

As I said last night, there'll never be a changing of the guard. There'll never be a new administration. Here, if you find that after four years you're not content, well, hopefully there's going to be another election.

You can get past one administration and on to another and hopefully the next will be better than the one you've had. But here you can wait and wait and wait and wait and there will never be a changing of the guard. So, you must make friends now with this One who sits upon the throne.

Be reconciled with Him now as the psalmist tells us. Kiss the Son now lest He be angry with you. Be reconciled in the way with this God because there's not going to be another.

This is the God with whom you will always have to deal. So, deal now. He goes on, His dominion is an everlasting dominion and His kingdom endures from generation to generation.

This is something very important for the seeker sensitive, the culturally sensitive type of Christianity. The One who sits upon the throne is immutable. He does not change.

His kingdom does not change. It endures the same from generation to generation and even though we don't believe it, men do not change. The fundamental problem of man when the gospel began is the fundamental problem today.

Notice that the gospel of the Apostle Paul in those many years he preached never changed. He went to different cultures. It did not change.

He lived decades and the culture around him changed during those decades, but his gospel did not change. God has an enduring kingdom. Now what you need to see is you say, yes, there was a time when God really and truly ruled in Europe.

There was a time when God really, really had control of the United States. That's absolutely absurd. He has control today.

The same control he had a hundred years ago. He can have control by manifesting His grace. He can have control by manifesting His judgment.

But make no mistake, His kingdom endures forever. This is not poetry. This is not just a narrative.

This is not something to make you feel better. This is true. This is reality.

This must confront your life on a daily basis to know that you are not your own. To know that there is a King that has been established and He rules over the nations and He rules over you and it's not just about governments or peoples, but it's about individuals and individual acts. It is about individual thoughts that you yourself as a person must be confronted with the absolute Lordship of the Son of God and seek to submit to that Lordship every day of your life.

You are not your own. You were bought with a price. He has a claim upon you at least by two great means.

First of all, He has a claim upon you in His Lordship by right of creation. You are Lord over that which you make. A potter makes a pot.

He can tear the pot apart. Another comes in who did not make the pot has no right to touch the pot. But the one who makes the pot, who makes the vessel, has the right to do whatever He chooses with that vessel.

So He has a right over you in His Lordship by means of creation. But with the Christian, He also has rights over them by means of redemption. I am the Lord your God who delivered you out of the house of slavery.

And then starts the Ten Commandments. I have redeemed you. I have bought you with a price.

You are not your own. But know this, the Lord who is over you, although He has infinitely more power than a Caesar, He does not rule you as a Caesar. He rules you as the one who seeks your benefit.

As the one who shed His own blood for your soul. Even while you were enemies, He died for you. How much more will this Lord of glory give you all things? So when we talk about the absolute Lordship, even the tyranny, that would be a proper word to use to describe Jesus Christ.

The tyrant. But when we think of tyrant, we think of someone with absolute power who becomes absolutely corrupt and selfish. Jesus Christ has absolute power.

But He is absolutely good. And in seeking His own glory above all things, He is doing the best for you. The one who benefits most from God doing everything for God is you.

Now let me explain that. Today, you can just see it on people's faces. I'll come in and I'll teach on the glory of God.

And I'll teach that God does everything for the great love He has for Himself. And you should see the look on people's faces. First shock.

And then their lip hangs down and they start pouting. And then there's almost this song going off in their head. What about me? I thought He did it all for me.

I mean, they'll get mad. They'll honestly get mad. I've never had anybody get mad when I've said God does things for you.

But when I say God does things for Him, they get mad. See, what you've got to understand is this. There is a sense in which a gift is a demonstration of love.

I give you a trite gift. It's not a measure of any amount of great love on my behalf. If I give you a piece of Wrigley Spearmint gum, you're not going to talk about it for the next 40 years.

So there's a sense in which a gift is a demonstration of the love. Now what's the greatest gift God could give you? Himself. The greatest, kindest, most merciful and splendid thing God could ever do for you is to take center stage of all of creation and do everything He does in order to manifest His beauty, His power, His holiness, the fullness of His attributes so that you can see them.

And that's what He's doing. Now there's a problem though. If your heart has not been regenerated and you do not want God as much as you want other things, then there's the problem.

That's why you have people following so much of this so-called Christianity today that is just prosperity teaching, that's all about people getting whatever they want and everything. You need to understand that those people aren't so much deceived by some leader. But they're following a leader who gives them exactly what they want.

They don't want God. They want cars. They want their best life now.

They want this and that. They don't want God. He goes on and He says, All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing.

Now notice here there's no apology. There's no explanation. Daniel doesn't come in here and write a little part underneath in parenthesis trying to protect the reputation of God by saying something like, well, when Nebuchadnezzar says this, that's not what he really means.

Does it mean that God is unconcerned about His creation? No. Does it mean that God finds nothing in His creation? Absolutely not. Does it mean that God does not love His creation? Absolutely not.

But what does it mean? It's speaking relatively. When you compare creation to God, the entire creation, everything that has ever existed through the great expanse of time, you put it all in the scale. Everything that's ever been made.

And you put the Son of God on the other scale and He outweighs them all. They are as nothing. That's how valuable, how splendid He is.

And then you mix in with that formula this, that creation is a fallen creation. And that in its fallenness, God owes it nothing. If God were to have condemned the entire world to hell, without moving on anyone's behalf, interposing to bring salvation, He would have still been a just and good God.

I remember once one of my professors said, if God had not become incarnate and died for men, I would be an atheist. As though God had to do this for man. Notice this.

In the ranking of creation, we are not the most splendid thing He ever made. I mean, when you walked in the room, I did not fall down in utter awe. But I could guarantee you if one of these angels around the throne of God walked into the room, I would probably fall down in utter awe.

Now notice this. The angels fell. Beings much more splendid and perfect.

And God did not send them a Savior. The Son of God did not take upon Himself whatever it is that angels are and die for them. He did not have to take upon Himself the likeness of sinful flesh and die for us.

You see, we assume so much. Heaven would not be heaven if you weren't there. That's not true.

Tozer makes a statement that if everyone on the face of the earth were to become blind, it would not diminish the glory of the sun, the moon, the stars. If everyone on earth were atheist, it would not diminish the glory of God. You see, one of the things that you need to understand about God is that He is the only truly free being.

That means He needs absolutely nothing from anyone. God made you because He was lonely. That's what people often tell their children.

It's the first blasphemous thought that most children have. And they owe it to their parents. God did not create out of need.

He created out of superabundance in His desire to show His own glory. He has no need. And so the inhabitants of the earth, there is nothing before Him.

And He does according to His will in the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. None of this God sitting there on a throne wringing His hands. He does everything, Paul tells us in the book of Ephesians, according to His own will.

Whether they be nations or individuals. He directs all things. Are men responsible? Yes.

Does God direct them according to the way He wants them to go? Yes. Jesus was crucified by the hands of wicked men? Yes. According to the foreordained plan of God? Yes.

Pharaoh was responsible for all the evil that he did against God in resisting His will? Yes. But for this very purpose God raised up Pharaoh. I like to put it this way.

People say, well that's just not right. No, this is what you need to understand. And Pharaoh is a good example.

If God had corrupted Pharaoh, that would have been wrong. Humanly speaking. That's one thing we need to understand.

God did not corrupt Pharaoh. Pharaoh was corrupt. God is sovereign over His corruption and can direct it in any shape, form, or fashion that He wants it to manifest itself.

God does not corrupt the stream, but God directs the corrupt stream and makes it go in the direction He wants it to go. Pharaoh had set his heart against God. Pharaoh hated God.

Pharaoh believed himself to be the Son of God. God took that corrupt heart and that corrupt will and He directed it in order to manifest His glory. God is sovereign.

He is sovereign over everything. And here we recognize that. A pagan king says he does everything according to his will in the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and no one can ward off his hand.

Well, God can't violate your will. He says no one can ward off His hand. He does whatever He wants.

You see, living in a democracy, which is a good thing, but we don't understand anything about authority. We don't respect authority. We question authority.

We have no idea what it means when the Bible says God is king or that God has absolute power. It means that He does everything He desires to do. And when He does it, no one can ward off His hand.

If He raises His hand, no one can hold it down on the table. If He chooses to lay His hand idly upon the table, no one can manipulate it or move it. He is God.

God. If we were to use that kind of terminology, we would expect Him to be this way, wouldn't we? Now He goes on and it says, Or say to Him, What have you done? Well, I just questioned God on this. You're not supposed to.

Well, I hear teachers a lot of times, it's alright to have questions. It's alright to have some questions. Not all questions are right regarding God.

Because they betray a lack of acknowledging that He is King and a lack of confidence. And when you ask your question, you just might hear something like this, And who are you to question God? You may be referred to the end of the book of Job when he's told to gird himself up and answer a few questions himself. The fact of the matter is, He's God.

Not a halfway God. Not a corporate God in the sense of He's called you into the boardroom and asked your opinion. He is God and King.

Yet He is a benevolent King and a loving King. I've heard some say, and I agree with it, that the freest man in the world is the one who is a slave to a perfect master. The whole idea of Adonai is almost like a contractual relationship.

When I say that you are my Lord, it is a wonderful freeing thing because a slave of a perfect master doesn't have to worry about a whole lot. You see, as a slave, I have one concern. There's only one concern that I ought to have.

What is my master's will? That's it. That's it! Boy, that simplifies things, doesn't it? Because He has to protect me. If someone comes against me, He has to fight them.

That's His job. He has to clothe me. He has to feed me.

He has to instruct me. He has to lead me. The only thing I have to do is, what is Thy will, O Lord? It is required of Him to do all things.

Now, on my computer, on that thing that scrolls across when I can't write anymore and there's just a blank page and all of a sudden that thing comes up, the screensaver thing. I've written up there and it scrolls across my computer. You concern yourself with my will.

I will concern myself with your care. What freedom there is in that. What freedom.

Absolute sovereignty is the only way a reasonable creature can have any peace in a world like ours. I heard years ago, a famous guy, and there's some things I agree with him on, some things I just don't agree with him on, but he was interviewing a group of women who had each lost their husband to death. And he said, I remember, his voice changed and he goes, Now, what is the one thing no one should ever come to you and say in your grieving? And they said, The worst thing they can ever say is that God's sovereign and God took our husbands.

And he goes, That's right. We live in a fallen world and bad things just happen, but God's there to comfort us. And I said, What kind of comfort is in that? I am 46 years old.

I have lost a father, a mother, a brother, and a sister. Now, what kind of comfort is there in a bad world took them, but God's doing the best He can? Or would it be more comforting to say, God is absolutely sovereign even over the death of my family, and I shall rest in Him. No one snuck up on Him.

The devil didn't win a victory. Nothing happened outside of His decree, but He is in control. I don't know what He's doing, but I don't have to because I know who He is.

There's a dear friend of mine in Peru that literally, he'd give his life for me. He's such a friend. If he ran into this room right now and said, Pablo, dame las llaves.

Paul, give me the keys. I'd throw him the keys. I wouldn't ask him what he was going to do with the keys.

I wouldn't ask him why he needs the keys. I wouldn't ask him anything because I don't have to. Why? Because I know who he is.

So whatever he's going to do with those keys will be okay. It's the same way in all these questions. Let me give you another example.

Now, please understand me. I am not saying that little babies go to hell. Don't say that.

That's not what I'm saying. But I want you just to listen to something for a moment. When someone asks me about little children, I'll always tell them this.

What if I told you I could find not one verse in the Bible that tells us exactly what God does with little children when they die, but I told you that it really didn't matter because we know the character of God and we know that whatever God does with those little children is the right thing because He did it. Can you rest in that? Most will say no. Now, again, I'm not saying that little children go to hell, but what I am saying is we ought to be able to say, God, I have just lost a child.

I have just lost a brother. I have just lost a sister. I don't know what you're going to do with him.

I don't know how this works out. But I don't need to because I do not rest in a proof text of Scripture. I rest in what I know about your character.

And whatever you do with this person that's dearly precious to me, I know it's the right thing. You see that? It's trusting in the character and absolute sovereignty of God. That is how we glorify God.

What's He doing? I don't know. Well, then how can you have peace? I know Him. And if everything in the circumstance screams that somehow God has betrayed me or failed me, I know that it is a lie from the evil one or from my own flesh.

You see? How important it is. You see, you get all these books about seven ways to overcome trials. I'll give you one way.

Know God. Know His character. And know that the one with this impeccable character is the omniscient, omnipotent, absolute sovereign Lord of glory.

And then rest. You see, have you ever wondered why Scripture doesn't tell us everything? It's because that's not the point. That's not the point at all.

Why is it of faith? Faith exalts the character of God. I do not see you, but I know what you've told me and I believe it. I do not understand what you're doing, but I know your character and I know that you're absolutely sovereign, so I rest in your person and who you are.

It's like when you know your little child is just... the only thing he thinks about are bionicles and tinker toys and everything else. He doesn't really worry about anything. Why? Because that's what Dad does.

I don't have to worry about anything. That's what Dad does. If someone tries to hurt me, Dad will beat him up.

If we need food, Dad will get it. I'm going to go play. Although misguided, what you see is a trust in character, a trust in power, albeit a limited power, in the same way with us trusting in God.

Trusting in God. Let me just say a few things. He's seated upon a throne.

The words communicate the settled undisturbed sovereignty of Him who does all things according to His will. Now, another thing that we're going to just get to here is it's lofty and exalted, His throne. That the Son is seated there lofty and exalted.

The Son is seen above all authority and power in heaven and on earth. Now Matthew Henry says something very profound here. He says, this throne is high.

You say, well what's profound about that? Just think about it. It's high. It's higher than all the other thrones.

Not only of this world, but there are supposedly, we can only sort of imagine from the traces we have in Scripture, there are principalities and powers and mights and dominions that they in themselves alone could take on all the armies of this world. We see every once in a while in the Old Testament just one of those guys coming down and putting away an army of 180,000 men or so. His throne is above all principalities and powers and mights and dominions.

Matthew Henry says, His throne is high and lifted up above all competition and contradiction. You know we say that when someone is insecure they're very competitive. They've got to prove themselves.

Or when someone's not necessarily insecure, but he's an athlete or a businessman and there's someone close on his heels that's about to take him over in business or another basketball player that's about to become the center of attention in the NBA, then this one that's in the lead starts striving even more and more to stay ahead. Notice that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is just seated. There's no competition.

When we talk about a war going on and Jesus Christ coming back on that white horse and fighting against the nations, realize that that's human speech. Realize that it's just a limited description of what's going on. Folks, it's not going to be much of a fight.

Notice that the sword comes out of His mouth. He speaks a word and it's over. There's no competition here.

He's not looking around thinking, well, some other throne is getting raised up higher than mine. I love what Matthew Henry says. His throne is high.

It is high. Now, notice this, and we're going to end on with the train of His robe filling the temple. Notice this.

The robe which filled the temple seemed to portray the expanse of the Son's majesty and the extent of His sovereignty. His robes reached everywhere and filled everything. Now listen to what Dalat writes.

He saw the Lord, and what is more, he saw the all-filling robe of the indescribable One. As far as the eye of the seer could look at first, the ground was covered by this splendid robe. There was consequently no room for anyone to stand.

There was no place in the throne room of God, the throne room of His dear Son, that you could stand, that you were not touched by the expanse of His sovereignty and His majesty. There is no place, no circumstance where you can be in heaven or on earth where His sovereignty is not filling every bit of that little container you're in. He's sovereign over all things.

Matthew Poole writes, His glorious robes reached down to the bottom of the temple and were spread abroad in the temple, which was an evidence, now listen to this, people don't talk this way anymore, which was evidence of a more than ordinary majesty. You see, all the terminology being used here, is it infallible? Is it inspired Scripture? Yes. But in another sense, because it is condescending, it can almost be described as pitiful language, as pitiful language.

That even this language here, this majestic vision that Isaiah has, in no way touches on the true majesty that he saw. And the true majesty that he saw in no way begins to encompass the real majesty of God. And the sovereignty he saw filling the entire temple, filling the entire earth, in no way did he comprehend the reality of it.

You and I have no cause for fretting. We have no cause for worry. We may have cause for brokenness.

We may have cause for confession. We may have cause for acknowledging we do not understand or comprehend the greatness of the One upon the throne, and that we do not trust as we ought. But we have no cause for worry or fret if we know this God.

What does Scripture tell us? Who will be strong? The ones who know their God. Well, everything is just falling apart according to the plan of God, according to the decree of God. But why would He do this? For His own glory and our good.

God is my Deliverer. In order for Him to be your Deliverer, you have to be delivered from something. He's seated upon a throne, high and lifted up.

The train of His robe filled the temple. His glory and His majesty. Now just to close, let me say something about prayer just for a moment.

Jesus Christ gave us the perfect psychology, I guess we could say, of prayer. The proper attitude that we are to have in prayer. Our Father is the first part.

Our Father. The Spirit of God within us cries out, Abba, Father. Term of endearment.

There is a sense in which we can run in where angels fear to tread. We are children of God. There is a sense in which we can play among the foals of that robe.

We are children of God. He is our Father. But our Father is in Heaven and is the Lord thereof.

And we hold those two things in attention. Now it's so hard, and this is the reason parents, especially those of you fathers, why you must understand this. Your children must learn to have confidence in you as a father and respect you.

To love you and not fear you, to love you and fear you. In that, they are going to learn much about God as a father. And learn to hold in attention, this is my Father.

My Father is the God of glory. When you approach the throne of God, you are not to be as a child who fears the inconsistency and the immorality of his father. A child comes home one day.

His father is in a good mood. He shows him a picture that he drew at school and the father takes him up in his arms and hugs him and says, you're a wonderful little boy. The next day the boy comes home with the same picture.

The father is in a bad mood and he slaps the kid across the room. And so the child fears his father in a sense that he doesn't know how his nature will be that day or how he will respond that day. There are such inconsistencies and immoralities in the father that he doesn't know how to approach him and therefore he fears him.

That is the way that pagans would approach their God. We don't approach God with the same sort of fear. We fear Him because He is good.

We fear Him because He is righteous. He is holy. But it is a fear in the sense of awesome acknowledging, something of an awesome comprehension of who this father is, of who He is.

So when you pray, don't use vain repetition. When you pray, don't just, unless you're falling off a cliff, be slow to open up your mouth. The moment, as I said last night, you wouldn't walk into the Oval Office just at a dead run and running with your mouth.

You would show respect. You would wait. You would choose words.

Not because of a fear of inconsistency or immorality, but realizing in the presence of whom you are. The same way when you pray, wait for a second. Think for a second.

Choose your words and talk to Him. Don't inform Him. He knows.

Don't preach to Him. And don't preach to others while you're praying. Preach when you preach and pray when you pray.

Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.

Let's pray. Father, thank You very, very much for this day. Thank You for Your Word.

It is a treasure. Thank You for Your Spirit who leads us. Father, please help that these things become realities in our lives.

That we are changed by our knowledge of God. Father, thank You for the mercy that You have shown. We ask that it will continue and multiply for Your glory.

In Jesus' name. Amen.