OWR
2026-05-24 Sunday Second

  • Introduction

    I once talked to a man who was worried sick during the presidential elections. The first term was over and he was terrified of the second. He practically ran up to me to ask if I was voting because “We gotta get that guy oughta here!” Everything was going to end in fire if we didn’t!
    Politics are dramatic these days, but that was actually back in 2012. He was terrified of Obama and convinced the world would end if he was reelected. And here we are 14 years later.
    In 1984 we were told that if Reagan were elected the world would end in a nuclear war.
    In 2000 all of our technology was going to fail and civilization with it
    In 2012 the world was about to end because of the Mayan calendar
    Seems like the worlds always on fire and about to come tumbling down. Like Tim said in one of his lessons while he was here, we used to have shows like Star Trek full of hope and progress for humanity. Now we have shows like Fallout where the world’s caught fire via nuclear war and everybody is eating each other.
    When looking at the future people are unsure, afraid, and pessimistic. Even if the world doesn’t end tomorrow it might just get so bad that we’d want it to!

    Connect

    Do we offer any kind of hope for all of those fears and anxieties? Does our faith offer us any comfort while the world burns?

    Text connection

    In Isaiah 6 the world wasn’t on fire, but it was about to catch. What’s our job before it all goes up in flames? The lessons we take from Isaiah here help us through fear and doubt, and teach us how to live when everyone else is convinced they’re dying.

    The Year Uzziah Died

    Isaiah 6:1 ESV
    1 In the year that King Uzziah died…

    Fearing the Socio-political Results

    What seems a passing reference to us had immense weight to Isaiah and Jerusalem. Uzziah was one of the few decent kings of Israel and one of the longest reigning - 52 years. He was here for a long time and a good time.
    He had a strong army that took back stolen land and kept the enemy at bay. He controlled important ports and trade roads which brought in money
    Chronicles describes him as an inventor and gardener ‘for he loved the soil.’ The way he’s described makes him sound like another Adam, making things closer to the Garden of Eden - a paradise full of God’s blessings.
    But near the end of those 52 years of sitting on the throne, Assyria began to rear its ugly head. These were the guys who would eventually conquer the 10 Northern tribes of Israel and cause untold misery in Jerusalem and the world. In the last three years of his life the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III began his military campaigns against Israel - and he was winning.
    And that’s when Uzziah died.
    To put it in our terms I’m 34. If Uzziah was king when I was born he would still be king when my kids move out of the house. For many of us he would be the only king we had ever known. And he was a good one. Forget worrying about the state of the union every four years - it’s been nothing but rising stock markets, righteous judgments, and winning the war on drugs, terror, crime and whatever else we could drop a bomb on since 1992!
    And on the brink of World War III, he dies.

    The Theological Implications

    In Uzziah’s death, Isaiah may have seen the fate of the nation. Uzziah had died as an unclean leper - forever banished from the presence of God because he grew proud and tried to take the authority of the priesthood for himself. Isaiah sees the nation of Israel on the same trajectory - growing proud, becoming unclean, and dying separated from God.

    I Saw The Lord

    Israel was in complete darkness with an unsure future and no clear way forward. And it’s in this day that Isaiah says…
    Isaiah 6:1 ESV
    1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.
    Uzziah didn’t sit on the throne anymore, but Yahweh still did. Uzziah couldn’t lead his people but Yahweh would. Uzziah was six-feet under and Yahweh is high and lifted up.

    Connect

    Find pictures
    This is what it looks like when people lose hope.
    And I don’t think we should just laugh at them. For many of them their politician is their only hope, and they don’t know just how sad that is.
    And it’s when people look like this, when we feel like this, that we need to look higher than the White House and see Jesus sitting on his throne - the cross - and remember that for Jesus the world did end.
    The enemy caught him
    His followers all abandoned him
    He was condemned in a mock trial
    He was stripped of everything he had and everyone he knew
    His world came to an end as he bled and died
    And then God picked him back up and sat him at the right hand of his throne
    The world may end, but God’s reign never will
    Isaiah 51:6 ESV
    6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.
    This is the hope people need to see in us when the world’s in flames. Whether it be
    Australia catching fire again
    Political turmoil
    Life’s more personal disasters of disease, death, and darkness
    We remind the world of who the king is.

    Unclean!

    But whatever hope Isaiah had when seeing Yahweh on the throne, it was quickly replaced with dread.
    Isaiah 6:2–5 ESV
    2 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. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 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!”

    Woe Is Me!

    Isaiah’s fear comes from three things:
    His own state - unclean
    God’s state - Holy
    Who God is with - the seraphim

    God’s Holiness

    Those seraphim, who we’ll talk about in a bit, call out to each other that God is “Holy, holy holy.” In Hebrew you intensify something by doubling it.
    We say “Pay attention!” They would say something like “Hear with hearing!”
    We say “You are so gonna die.” They say “You will die in your dying.”
    In Isaiah 6 God is holy in his holiness and then throw in another holy.
    When the idea of holy is applied to people it means that God has claimed them, separated them from the masses, and given them a unique status or responsibility. When holy is applied to God we’re being told that he is uniquely different from anything else we would want to call a god. He’s not just a little different - he’s different, different, different!
    He’s holy and unique in his power
    He’s different in his behavior
    He surpasses any kind of deity we could conceive
    And the consistent picture used to explain God’s holiness is fire.
    When he appeared to Moses it was in the form of a burning bush. God spoke to him from the fire.
    When Israel was at the Red Sea, God appeared as a pillar of fire
    At Mt. Sinai as Israel was meeting him for the first time
    Exodus 19:18 ESV
    18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.
    It was like standing at the foot of an active volcano. And as Israel looks on they have equal parts dread and wonder.
    On 13 August 2015, there were two explosions in a chemical warehouse in China. It wrecked an area with a radius 1.5 miles and caused a fireball that could be seen from space. One eye-witness told reporters, “It was like what we were told a nuclear bomb would be like… I’ve never even thought I’d see such a thing. It was terrifying, but also beautiful.”
    God’s fire is a terror and a beauty. Full of danger that we’re inexplicably drawn to.

    When Holy Meets Unclean

    Isaiah, though, is feeling the terror.
    Isaiah 6:5 ESV
    5 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!”
    In contrast to God’s holiness, Isaiah sees his uncleaness. Isaiah 5 was full of woes against all the sinners in Israel: woe to the greedy, the proud, the evil, the unjust! Now Isaiah pronounces a woe on himself.
    He specifically locates the uncleaness at the lips. There’s something about his speech and Israel’s that have caused a rupture in the relationship between them and God. I like to think it’s similar to the thought in Isaiah 29:13
    Isaiah 29:13 ESV
    13 And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men,
    Isaiah and the rest of the people talk a good game, but it doesn’t reflect the state of their heart. Sure they’ll talk about how God rules the universe, but they don’t live like he does. The lips are unclean because they lie.
    We can see that being the case with all the people Isaiah has been condemning, but does Isaiah - a prophet who speaks for God - deserve the same condemnation?

    Connect

    We tend to read the bible as a series of stories with good guys and bad guys, and we like to identify with the good guys.
    We wouldn’t have been offering false worship to God
    We wouldn’t be self-righteous like the Pharisees
    We wouldn’t deny Jesus three times like Peter did
    We picture ourselves standing with God over the rest of the nations pointing the condemning finger alongside God. We see ourselves and think “I’m not like those guys at all! I’m with God!”
    Isaiah got one look at God and realized that his righteousness was nothing in the presence of God. The distance between Isaiah and the people might have looked great, but when comparing with the greater distance he was from God, Isaiah realized they were roommates.
    Isaiah 64:6 ESV
    6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
    Sin is incompatible with God’s presence, so it’s burned away. Isaiah is afraid that he is so full of sin that when the burning is over there won’t be anything left.
    This brings us to the Seraphim

    The Seraphim

    With Yahweh are two supernatural beings called the seraphim. That word hasn’t been translated from Hebrew, it’s the same word Isaiah wrote down.
    They’re standing with God and have six wings, covering their face and their feet, which is a euphemism for their nakedness, and with the other two they fly. Other than that we don’t know much.
    Some people think they’re flying snakes because saraph is a Hebrew word for snakes But these guys have hands according to verse 6.
    Saraph is a also the Hebrew word for burning.
    In nearly every instance of the word saraph in the Old Testament it’s in the context of judgment.
    If a priests daughter turned to prostitution she war burned - an Israel was playing the whore with the surrounding nations
    Any idol and pagan place of worship was to be burned - and Israel was full of idols
    People like Nadab and Abihu who came into God’s presence without the proper reverence were burned - and Isaiah sees the Lord on his throne.
    Isaiah 33:14 ESV
    14 The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?”

    Cleansed

    If we stopped reading here our imagination could take us down a very likely path. The first five chapters of Isaiah are not kind to Israel.
    They’re sick from head to toe
    Compared to Sodom and Gomorrah
    An unfaithful city to be judged and destroyed
    A vineyard that fails to produce fruit
    Isaiah is unclean, the people are unclean, and God must be here to judge them. God arrives on the scene with his “burning ones” and we’re starting to realize that the world’s on fire because God is done putting up with it.
    It’s an idea we hear about a lot. Every big news story is followed by some the End is Nigh preacher:
    COVID is God’s judgement on the world
    Hurricane’s are caused by homosexuals
    School shootings happen because we took prayer out of school
    All of these disaster’s are seen as a sign that the world is a mess and so God is here to send it all down the drain. Bring on the burning - it’s time to bring the pain and judgement.
    But God isn’t showing himself to Isaiah to announce the end of the world. Instead, we read of God’s grace.
    Isaiah 6:6–7 ESV
    6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
    God doesn’t want to burn Isaiah to nothing, he wants to purify him. He wants to remove his guilt and atone for his sins. We can’t approach God without being undone, but God can come to us - and he wants, more than anything, to see us saved and standing in his presence.
    And if Isaiah, a man of unclean lips, dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean lips, can be purified and brought near to God - so can the rest of Israel.
    Remember that God is showing himself to Isaiah in the temple. This is not just the place where God likes to hang out - it was the place where people could approach God and mend their broken relationship with him. God shows himself in the temple - “I am here to dwell with my people. I am here to remove your guilt and atone for your sins.”
    We see doom and gloom in the news, God sees something worth saving. When the world’s on fire, God’s the one rushing into the burning house to save everyone he can. He doesn’t sit back and toast marshmallows…
    And neither should we.

    Commissioning

    Isaiah 6:8 ESV
    8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”
    Isaiah’s cleansing makes him an ideal candidate for God’s work. Isaiah doesn't need to be convinced, he’s not even told what the job is! All he’s seen is what the Lord can do and now he has the drive to make sure everyone else does too. I would have been undone by the Lord, if it had not been for the Lord’s cleansing. So now I will live for my God.

    The Job

    Isaiah 6:9–10 ESV
    9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people: “ ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ 10 Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”
    This task would sound heretical to us if it wasn’t coming straight from God! Go preach Isaiah! But not to any effect.
    Make their hearts dull
    Make them deaf and blind
    Make it so these people don’t understand, don’t turn back, and don’t get healed.
    Does God want to save his people or not? Why would he shut their ears and blind their eyes? Why would he prevent Israel from being healed?
    God is not intending to dull the people’s hearts by casting some curse on them. He’s making them more dull, more deaf, and more blind simply by having his word preached. It’s something that the people have heard time and time again, and the more they hear the less they care.
    It’s similar to school shootings. Columbine lives forever in our memories. Sandy Hook shook us to our core. The other 579 school shootings that have happened since Sandyhook Elementary just weren’t very newsworthy. Continual exposure has made something shocking, mundane. Same thing happens with the gospel. After someone has rejected it the first time, it gets easier and easier to just continually ignore it.
    Isaiah’s job is to preach to a people:
    Who only will put up with the good news for so long
    Who’s eyes glaze over whenever he opens his mouth
    Who want to hear less and less of what he has to say.

    How Long?

    That sounds like a really depressing job. You ever have that really cool story you want to share with the group, but you’re always being talked over and no one seems to understand why you would be so excited over it? I can say, as someone who has unfortunately taught people who have snored through my sermons, it doesn’t feel good. To be so energized and excited to bring a word from God only to have it met by indifference and apathy is soul crushing.
    So Isaiah asks a natural question:
    Isaiah 6:11–13 ESV
    11 Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, 12 and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. 13 And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump.
    How long do I have to keep up this business of saving the world? Isaiah asks…
    Keep preaching, until it’s too late. Preach until the cities are destroyed. Preach until the land is a desolate waste. Preach them into the grave. And when you see a bit of hope for actual results - that’s going to be burned up too. But keep preaching.
    We get a little confused on what makes a successful evangelist. I was interviewed for a church before leaving Old Wire and they asked how many people I had baptized. At that point it was just one - Arianne! So they weren’t to interested. We might look at the 99 people we’ve invited and think we’ve had 99 failures. Because when we think of successful evangelism we think how many people we put in the water. We think of conversions, we think of growing attendance.
    By our standards Isaiah was never successful.
    God’s idea of successful evangelism is preaching the good news to a dying world - regardless of their response. If everyone in your life knows that God reigns and that he wants to cleanse them - you are a successful evangelist. The only ones who fail at evangelism are the ones who give up.
    God does not call us to see results - he calls us to faithful service even in the face of crushing defeat.
    We need a great deal of endurance in our proclaiming of the word, because we might be as successful as Isaiah. And if we’re not careful, we ourselves, after facing so much rejection, might become dull in heart and stop preaching.
    We stop because we don’t see results
    We stop because we don’t see the world getting better
    We stop because nobody listens
    We stop because we forget that God sits on the throne.
    But we need to preach in hope.
    Isaiah 6:13 ESV
    13 And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump.
    Isaiah will preach until Israel is reduced to a tenth and burned again. But is that the end? The burning coal that touched Isaiah wasn’t his end, but a new beginning. God tells us that the tree of Israel has fallen but a holy seed is germinating - new life. Even if we preach to no avail, and the world keeps falling further and further into the darkness - God always holds out the promise of life.

    Conclusion

    What do we do in a world on fire?
    We remember that God is sitting on the throne
    The world is only heading to where God lets it go. This world is broken, but God will fix it.
    2. We remember God has cleansed us
    That he does not want to see us undone, but restored and able to stand in his presence.
    3. We remember God has commissioned us
    If he has cleansed you, he can cleanse others.
    4. We remember that while the world is burning, God protects his holy seed
    Hear the word of the Lord. Will your eyes see, you ears hear? God wants to cleanse you and this world if you’ll open your heart.

      • Isaiah 6:1ESV

      • Isaiah 6:1ESV

      • Isaiah 51:6ESV

      • Isaiah 6:2–5ESV

      • Exodus 19:18ESV

      • Isaiah 6:5ESV

      • Isaiah 29:13ESV

      • Isaiah 64:6ESV

      • Isaiah 33:14ESV

      • Isaiah 6:6–7ESV

      • Isaiah 6:8ESV

      • Isaiah 6:9–10ESV

      • Isaiah 6:11–13ESV

      • Isaiah 6:13ESV

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