Isaiah's Salvation

I invite you to turn to Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah chapter 6. A very familiar portion. If I had asked you to turn to the most familiar chapter in the book of Isaiah, you would already be at 53. And if I had asked you to turn to the second most familiar, you might have turned to chapter 6. And we begin reading at verse 1. "...in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw, for the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up in his train, filled the temple.

As it stood, the seraphims, each one had six wings. With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.

And the post of the doors moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a knife cold in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquities taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Who shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me.

God will add his blessing to the reading of his precious word. Of all the things that are happening in the world today, there is nothing greater than an unsaved person coming to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. I think I can prove that by hearing the testimonies of Christians.

You are in the habit of saying, Of all the things that happened in my lifetime, there is none greater than that day when I came to God's family, when I turned from being hellbound and started being heavenbound. That must be the greatest event that can ever happen to a person. And there are many here this morning who can look back to that wonderful day.

And as I look over the audience, I would like to believe that that is true of everyone in the audience. But in an audience of this size, very often there is one or two or three or perhaps four who have not yet been able to say, If I should die today, I K-N-O-W that I'm on the way to heaven. I'm still hoping, I am preduming, but I can't say that I know.

It seems appropriate that every company of Christians ought to have at least one service in the week where we aim our message especially for that one person who has not yet received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. There are quite a number of characters in our Bible, and in some cases we are told about their red-letter day, their day of conversion. Sometimes in rather detail, in John Chapter 1, you will read about the disciples, Andrew, John, Peter, Philip, Nathaniel, how they came to know their Savior.

Then in the book of the Acts, you have more details about a man who I would have considered Mr. Impossible, Saul of Tarsus, a religious man. By the way, it is much harder for a religious person to be saved, but it can be done, and that is proved in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. When we come to the Old Testament, we also have many, many characters mentioned there, and if I were to ask you, when was Abraham saved? When was Isaac saved? When was Joseph saved? When was Isaiah saved? We are not quite sure about that, are we? But if you were to ask me, is there any part of the second-largest book in our Bible, the book of Isaiah, so far as chapters are concerned, is there anything in his book that tells us when he was saved? Then I would have to say, this is the nearest one, and if this is not the story of his conversion, it certainly illustrates the conversion of a sinner.

He starts out by telling when he was saved. In the year that King Isaiah died. They evidently didn't have calendars in those days, and he couldn't say March the 1st.

He had to say and point to a certain event in the year that King Isaiah died. I wonder why he thought that. Why didn't he say during the years that King Isaiah reigned? Why point to his death? Now, I have to presume that you are well taught in the Bible, but just in case you have overlooked 2 Chronicles 26, we have the story of King Isaiah.

A very wonderful man. Wonderful in the respect that he went on the throne at the age of 16. And those of us who are saying, all the teenagers have gone to the dogs, they're not a serious minded man among them, we're wrong.

And because there are at least some who stand up, we ought to be thankful and we ought to encourage every one of them. At 16, on the throne? That would be quite a risk, wouldn't it? We just had an election in the States and that man was well seasoned, 69 years of age, almost too old to be a president in the eyes of some. But if his running mate had been a 16 year old, I wonder if you would have voted for him.

King Isaiah, at 16, took a tremendous responsibility. And there are a few things that I read about him that are rather remarkable. In that chapter it says, As long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper again, and his name spread far abroad, for he was marvelously helped till he was strong.

A wonderful king, but there was a tremendous downfall in the life of that man. His life can be summed up with three words, his prosperity, his pride, and his punishment. And at that particular point where God helped him marvelously until he was strong, one day he got the idea, I ought to be able to go into the temple and offer incense on the altar.

They say that only the sons of Aaron can do that, but that doesn't seem reasonable. I ought to, I'm king, why should that be reserved to the sons of Aaron? I ought to be able to do it and I'm going to do it. There was a high priest who saw him venture in and he said, King Isaiah, don't do it! God in heaven has rules and regulations and you will suffer if you break his laws.

There were 80 other men who were behind that high priest and they joined and they said, Please King Isaiah, don't you venture in. And it says he was rough. None's going to tell me what I can do and what I can't do.

And at that moment, he was stricken with the most dreaded disease of leprosy. But a man isn't warned by his friends, he is promptly stopped by God. And it was so in the case of King Isaiah, a great man with a great future.

Reigned for 52 years and then he stumbled. No, that's not the word. He sinned against God and God said, the soul that sins shall die.

I have to tell the world that when a man presumes and will not listen to me, there must be punishment following. And you see that poor man losing his life prematurely at the age of 68. And he died because of a terrible blunder that he made.

Now, I have no idea what funerals were like in those days. Whether they had them similar to what we have today or whether there were viewings before. But if it had been as in our day, then I presume that Isaiah attended either the funeral or the viewing.

And while he sees the man lying there or because of leprosy it might have been a closed box. He still knows who is inside and he is saying to himself as to all the rest of the people, to bed. He actually committed suicide.

He could still be living. If only he had followed his earlier days and had done that which is right in the sight of the Lord. It was at that death or maybe that funeral that Isaiah first of all realized, I have to die someday.

Someday these same people perhaps will come and I will not be among them. I will be in the casket. I wonder what they are going to say.

I wonder what they are going to think when they come to remember that I once lived on the face of the earth. What will they say? Poor Isaiah, he might still be living. But he did not listen to what God did.

I am going to pass on to eternity someday. I know I will. But something has to be done.

I am now aware of the fact of the brevity of life and also the uncertainty of life. That life has to come to an end. Every person that is saved has to have a moment of awakening.

Up until that particular point he has a happy-go-lucky life. He is enjoying everything. He is interested in material gain and all the things that life has to offer.

But there comes a certain moment when that person says, I have got to start to think seriously. I have a soul that will either spend eternity in hell or in heaven. And I have not done anything about it.

Which means I am on the road to hell. I am surprised that that did not make me serious before, but I am serious now. Something has got to be done.

Thank God Isaiah came to that realization. There will be quite a number of people in heaven who will be able to say, as did Isaiah, in the day, in the year that King Uzziah died. I was made aware of something that I never thought of before.

I have preached many, many funeral sermons and I would like to have a suspicion that, at least when I preach the funeral sermon of a Christian, that in every case someone will be met in heaven who was awakened at that particular point. Sermons did not reach him. Personal testimonies did not reach him.

But face-to-face with death brought that seriousness that must come to the heart of the sinner. The first year that we arrived in Durham, North Carolina, a lady told me about her conversion and she said the Lord blessed us with four daughters, had an average American home where we were enjoying life to the full. But one day the second oldest daughter was sick and got worse and eventually we had to face it.

We might lose her. And we did. We followed that little calf out into the cemetery and on the way back from the cemetery I said to my husband, there is a possibility that God took this little girl because her parents were not fit to raise children.

He would rather have her up there than to grow up in a home where the father and mother do not know the Lord. There's a possibility the Lord is in this and something has got to be done about it. You won't believe my story that it was only about 18 months later when the third daughter took sick, entirely different from the other one, and she died.

We went to the same cemetery and we walked back that same road and I said to my husband, do you remember what I talked about when we came back? I said, something's got to be done. And we didn't. And we didn't.

We still have two daughters, the youngest one and the oldest one, and it may be God will take them all if we don't get down to serious business. And that's how I trusted the Savior. You say, does God scare people like that? I don't know.

I don't care what it was that brought her to that serious point. I'm glad it did. That coupled to the Lord Jesus Christ.

There may be people in my audience this morning who in giving your testimony will say something similar. It took God moving the furniture, God speaking through bereavement in order to bring me to serious thinking of the need of my soul. Well, it was so in Isaiah's case.

But in that first verse I read that I saw also the Lord, which means there's something number two. The first he saw was that life is short. And life is very serious.

Life is real. Life is earnest. And the grave is not its goal.

I saw also the Lord high and lifted up. He saw God as He really is. He heard the words, Holy, Holy, Holy.

If you want something interesting or maybe rather alarming, you go to a busy street corner and see if you can find some people who are not too busy to talk and ask them, Tell me, what is God like? I wonder what kind of answers you would get. Oh, there would be a variety of answers, but I think among them you would find someone saying, My idea of God is that He is a very loving God. A very kind God.

A very graceful God. A very merciful God. Just bowing over with love and compassion.

Anything more? No, I think that sums it up. Evidently you have not been reading your Bible because everything you have told me about God is true. But there are a number of things you didn't tell me that are also true.

And that is that God is a righteous God. God is a holy God. And God will punish sin.

And the world doesn't know that. The devil has been successful in blinding the minds of people regarding the righteousness of God, the holiness of God. And I suppose that if you took this man's answer, you could say evidently to him God is a little bit like Santa Claus.

A nice, easy-going God who is ready to forgive everybody who wants to be forgiven. That is not the picture of God as revealed in the Bible, and it appears that Isaiah at this point said, Micey God, hide and lift it up. A few expressions that are mentioned here.

The scope of his glory and the demonstration of his power. The posts of the door moved with the voice of him that cried, and thus was filled with smoke. Does that sound like a Santa Claus? It does not.

It reveals that God is a holy God. And as you were hearing in the message and song, there is coming a day when our Savior is going to sit at the great white throne, and that won't be a very happy occasion. God is a holy God.

And it's necessary for sinners to come face to face with the God as he is described in the Bible. That he is a loving God and a gracious God and ready to say, that's wonderful, but he's more than that. He's a holy God, and he will punish every sinner that trifles his soul.

But there's something more he saw than that. Because when you see God as he really is, then you're going to see yourself as you really are. And the next thing that he saw was in verse 5, Then said I, When, after I saw God high and lifted up, Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone, and a man of unclean lips.

When you get a good picture of God as he really is, you start to shrink, and shrink, and shrink, until you are absolutely worthless in his sight. Someone has coined the expression, Would someone the gift would give us to see ourselves as others see us? That's nice, isn't it? Would you like to know what your neighbors think of you? Yes, you would. I think you're better off if you don't know.

You're happier if you don't know. It's nice you don't know. Let me change that.

Would someone the gift would give us to see ourselves as God does see us? And we have that gift right here, do we not? Would someone the gift would give us, there it is, to see ourselves as God would see us? And every person that comes to this book and says, Honestly, Lord, show me how I stand in your presence. He will find all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. He will find all we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He will find a picture that is not too glamorous and it will cause the person to say, Woe is me.

Another one in the Bible said, Behold, I am vile. Another one said, I repent in dust and ashes. Another one said, God be merciful to me a sinner.

That's what happens when you get a sight of God as it really is. You see yourself as a helpless, lost, hell-deserving sinner. That's a painful experience, isn't it? And it's keeping some from the Savior.

I heard one man say, I would like to be saved, but I dread the process. What he meant, I don't like getting down, way down. After all, there are some low-down people living around me.

I'm not down with them. I'm sorry. You should be thankful.

Perhaps that you were raised in a Christian home. You haven't shielded from the gutter of sin. You should be thankful for that.

But remember this, if you want to be saved, you'll have to get right down with the rest of them. You will have to admit that you're a lost, guilty sinner. I ask you honestly, are you prepared to do that? And if your answer is no, the Bible says you can't go to heaven.

Because every person that's in heaven had to, on earth, admit, I'm lost, difficult. But it has to be done. Sometimes people come in and say, you know, I don't know whether I'm saved or not.

Can you tell me if I am? And I say, if I could look into your heart and do what the Savior did while he was here, I could tell you exactly, but I can't do that. But maybe I can help you by just asking you a question. Have you ever been lost? No.

Now I can tell you that you're not saved. The Son of Man has come to seek and to save reasonably good people. Let's go back to the King James.

That which we're lost. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save you remember, sinners. Now let's face it again.

Are you a sinner in God's sight? You've broken his laws. Only once? That's wonderful. But if once, it'll take you to hell.

Because there's nothing you can do about that one. You can't erase it. It stands.

And you will have to face it at the great white throne. All right, look at it again. Isaiah saw a number of things.

He saw the brevity of life, the seriousness of being ready for this eventuality of death. He saw God as he really is. Presented in the word of God.

A righteous God. A holy God. A God that will stand in judgment over the sinner.

And he saw himself as a lost, guilty sinner.