Now, a young South African journalist once had the chance to interview Nelson Mandela shortly after um his release from the prison. You know, she was nervous uh but eager. She had prepared dozens of questions. You know, think of this one great um interview you get to do. It's not every often that someone gets to interview a person like Mandela. But when she finally entered the room, something very very unexpected happened than what he had she had thought or dreamt about. Mandela stood up, walked over and shook her hand with both of his and then he said this, looking in her eye, "Thank you for taking time to speak with me." that the young journalist was stunned. He thanked me. She could hardly ask any questions she had written down to go and ask him. She later said I had prepared for an interview. But what I experienced was a presence, dignity, humility, and gravity that made me feel honored and exposed. She didn't just meet a political figure. She encountered a man whose life carried significant weight. And that one moment changed her. Today we are in the book of Isaiah. We're going to see a divine encounter that one of the most brilliant minds of that time had and how that radically and totally transformed his life. And taking a step back as we are journeying through the book of the Bible, we are trying to trace how God revealed himself to humanity in redemptive history. How he is a historical God. He is a real God. God cannot reveal himself all at once to anyone because none of us have the rational abilities to comprehend that. So he works in human history and he wants to progressively show to us who he is. And we spoke about creation and how God revealed himself through that. And we then spoke about how man fell and why we have so much problems in this world. Why is there evil in this world? Why is there suffering in this world? We went through all of those. And then we saw how God made covenants with specific people who were not perfect, who were completely imperfect like you and I. And then through them he raised a group of people. He wanted to focus and and reveal himself to them. And these were people who were in slavery and ended up becoming a nation by themselves later on. and still were so imperfect that God had to finally give them priests who can reveal to them their imperfections and show them that they needed someone to cover for what they are doing. And after that, we saw how they craved to have a king and and and God said, "All right, I'm going to give you some kings." And he gave them the best kings, the brightest kings, the smartest kings. And how one after the other, every one of them failed. And here we are at this point of history where we are seeing the fall of kings and the rise of prophets. So God has been showing to them that he's a creator and how they needed a priest and how their need for a king, an earthly king was not satisfied. And we all know where this is headed because when Jesus Christ after he was resurrected and he was walking with those two disciples on the road to Amos, he he told them, "Don't you know that all of them point to me, the law, the prophets, and the books?" And we are trying to just trace that. And the reason we are doing this as a side note I hope is um you know for most of us we don't read the Old Testament very much. We're stuck in the New Testament or even when we read the Old Testament we try to completely not know how to interpret it because it's historical has some of these things that are mind-boggling to us. There is murder there is wars. um there is slavery and we don't know how to understand and we get caught on those details and we are not able to make sense. So I hope this is also helping you to have a desire to read the whole Bible um in the right way and and extract wonderful truths. And we've been seeing even though we are tracing redemptive history in every text we are seeing so much of real life applications that we are able to take isn't it? So I just wanted to say that we don't forget that arc that we are covering before we go into our text today. And today's text is really one of the most beautiful texts in the whole of the Bible where someone gets to see God, someone gets a glimpse of heaven, someone gets this divine encounter that completely changes his life. And there are three things I want to talk about that happen in this divine encounter. The first thing that happens in this divine encounter is Isaiah the prophet, the emerging prophet, we are in the prophetic age. We're going to look at major prophets over the next few weeks and then the minor prophets. He gets to see the glory of God. A very rare experience. This not something that everybody gets. And we are going to see what this does to him. When he sees the glory of God, he immediately gets to reckon with the guilt of his insufficiency. He starts to see how small he feels about himself just like how this reporter felt in the presence of Mandela. And then finally we are going to see how this does not leave him condemned uh or down but he gets to taste the grace of God and how his life purpose changes and how he changes and how God does something amazing through all of that. That is what we're going to look at. So are you guys ready? A faint yes from this side. I don't know what's going on this week. You all look tired. All right, let's uh start with glory. So the first few verses in Isaiah begins with this. It begins with a historical note. It says, "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." You know, if you read uh in 2 Chronicles about this King Uzziah, we're going to come to that in a minute. He was one of the last great kings um that Judah had. He ruled for nearly 50 55 years. He did wonderful things for them. And they were beginning to trust, oh maybe finally he is the one. He is the one who is going to make our lives amazing again. And then something terrible happens to him. He contracts leprosy, stays isolated and dies a very lonely death. What do you think happens when this whole nation looks up to this leader and think this leader is going to eventually he's going to be our messiah. He's going to make our life amazing and he dies. They are going to feel hopeless. And it is in this juncture that God is taking this man Isaiah and revealing to him something profound. He's giving him a glimpse of what's actually happening right now. He's saying the reality is you need to see the reality. The reality is not just what happens here on earth. There is a reality that is happening in heaven. And that reality is that I, your covenantal God, I, the God of your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I'm still sitting on a throne high and lifted up. Says the train of his robe filled the temple. Even when when their awesome king died, God was revealing to them, you are not left orphaned, my covenant people, I am still in charge. I reign. Not just reigns, he's sitting on a throne. When you say sitting, it's usually refers to a king who gone to battle and accomplished a great victory and is now sitting. There are no more battles to be fought. He absolutely has absolute power over everything. And that is what we see. And we know when it talks about Yahweh and Jesus later on identifies himself with this, he overcame every power and principality of this world and is seated at the right hand of God. Isaiah gets to see that you know that's something we need to remember of where we are and what is life right now. What is reality? Reality is not just what we see here on earth. You know John Murray a reformed theologian would call it as prospective esquetology. We need to live in the reality that our life is not just over when we live here and die. There is a life beyond death. And even right now, there is a life that you and I get to experience a spiritual life reigning together with Christ in heaven. And it's because of that we can even now enter God's presence and not feel completely lost or hopeless when life throws a curveball at us. Even now we can say when bad things happen to us that our covenantal God has not given up on us. He wanted the Israelites to know, hey, don't lose hope. I still reign. And he wants you and I to know that he reigns. He wants you and I to know he still reigns. When you lose a job, he wants you to know life's not the end. I still reign. I'm watching over you. When I fall sick, God reigns. When I lose a loved one, he reigns. Does this happen to you when you go through a difficult time? Is that your first thought that comes to you to say, "No, my God still reigns. It is not over till God says it is over." And if that has not happened in your life, perhaps this is a divine encounter even you would need this morning and you can pray for that. And what is it that Isaiah gets to see? You know, it says here that in verse two, above him stood the seraraphim, an angelic being. 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 and said, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, and the whole earth is full of his glory." And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. You know what Isaiah gets a glimpse of is the glory of God. You know the Hebrew word glory as we have heard several times before is not the way in which we use glory in contemporary times. It's a word that literally means wait just wait and it refers to a contrast between something that's permanent versus something that's ephemereral and illusory. It means the substantial the important versus the unimportant. When it talks about God's glory, it's talking about God's weightiness that compared to everything else, God alone is permanent. God alone is real and God alone matters. Compared to anything else, nothing but God matters. You know, if you drop an object that is very heavy into water, there's a flood. It displaces the amount of water that it occupies. If you drop an object heavier than ice onto a coding of ice, there is an ice quake. It just breaks because the object has more glory, more weight than ice that the ice breaks. apart because the object has more glory, more weight than water, the water gives way. You know when the reality of God comes into your heart, into your life, it changes everything around you. When the reality of God comes down into Isaiah's life, everything in his life gets rearranged. Everything gets re-engineered. His view of himself changes. His view of history changes. That is what we want to talk about this morning. In fact, when you read the Bible, every time God's presence comes, there is an earthquake. Literally, an earthquake because of the glory of God. Because God is more glorious, more heavy, more weighty, more permanent than anything else. Now when he comes down on Mount Si in Exodus 19, we saw that the mountain trembled violently. When he came down into the upper room in Acts chapter 2 during Pentecost, it says the room trembled and shook violently because God's glory is ultimate compared to God. Everything else has no weight is not important. And when God's reality comes down into our heart, everything gets shaken. Now what do we mean by that? What am I talking about when I say God's glory coming into our heart? You know there are two things we can think about when we talk about God. Some of us, for some of us, the idea of God may be acceptable. We may say, I believe there is a power. Someone something must have been there that created this world and it's totally fine. And God remains an idea or a concept. And yet he can just be that and never a reality. There is a difference in believing in God as a concept or an idea and having an experience of God's glory. When Isaiah walked into the temple and saw the Lord high and lifted up and his train filling the temple, he just didn't say, "Oh, I believe there is a God." Of course he believed but God was just a concept till this moment but then he became a reality when he saw the glory of God. Now the difference between a concept and a reality is this. It's all a matter of glory. God as a concept is someone who is lighter than you. When you bring God as a concept in your life, you get to shape that concept of God, it fits in around your existing patterns. It doesn't move you around. If you believe in God and it just hasn't changed your life very much, whether you're a Christian or a Buddhist or a Hindu or an atheist or an agnostic, then God is just a concept. A God concept really can't change your beliefs around. It just fits in with your existing beliefs. We believe in God because I think, oh, there must have been a creator because that makes sense why I'm here. Or we believe in God because in the future we are hoping we're going to go to heaven. Or we believe in God as a good force or something like that. But we don't believe in God in a way that he comes in and rearranges our life or our beliefs. If the only thing that has changed when you became a Christian or if you're born and raised in a Christian home is that your idea of God has changed and every other aspect of your life has not rearranged then the glory of God has not come into your life. We are made to fit God with your existing beliefs. You shape, you get to shape the God concept. And the God concept doesn't shape you. You have more glory, more weight than the God concept. In that case, this God idea is lighter because he's just out there just sticking around on the periphery of your life and you're just running your life the way you want it. You're more weightier than the glory of God. The God concept not only moves into the existing patterns of our beliefs but the existing patterns of our agendas and our plans and goals. You know plenty of people they want to get religious. They want to go to church. They start to pray. They read the Bible because why? They need help in getting to their goals. Maybe they say I need more inspiration. I need more strength. I'm having trouble reaching my goals. In other words, you want to fit God into your agenda. Fit God into your existing belief. That's what I mean by saying God as an idea is lighter than you. But God as a reality, who he is, is heavier than you. He can't just come into your life and mold into however you want him to be molded into. When he comes into your life, he displaces things like the water that gets splashed out. When you actually get into the presence of the real God, things give way in your life to his glory. Things you've always believed perhaps and believe very deeply even are changed by his word because God has more weight and glory than your beliefs. He can change things you you think also God instead of God being fit into your agenda, he becomes your new agenda. He radically changes your priorities. Your agenda, my agenda, apart from God, we all have the same agenda in life, isn't it? Which is to have a very safe, tidy little life, to watch our back and be careful and to look out for number one. That's the life we all want. But God, when his weightiness, his glory comes in, he's going to say, "Sacrifice your individual needs because I'm more real than your individual needs. I'm more weightier than that. I have glory." You know, every person who's had that divine encounter has seen some displacement happening in their life. You can read stories about that. In every person throughout the Bible, when they have this divine encounter, there is the weightiness of God that hits them that has never hit them before and suddenly they realize everything's changed. May I ask you my dear friends, have you had that divine encounter with God where his weightiness is where God is not just an idea or a concept or even a cool theology or a doctrine that you can appreciate but nothing is displaced in your life. It's just the same. Then perhaps you may want to pray and ask God for this deep divine encounter like the one that Isaiah had because God alone changes. And when we keep chasing and pursuing all these other things that we think is going to make our life stable, is going to make our life great, is going to give our children a great future, all of that can be snapped in a minute. You know, this last week, if you're following the news, you saw this flight that took off and within minutes crashed and all but one person died. Life's just a fleeting dream. Anything can happen anytimes. And when you and I die, what do you think we are going to be remembered for? What do you think is going to happen to all those things that we spent our time and energy and effort into to create a safe future for oursel to create a safe future for our children to create a safe future for our name? I'll tell you what will happen when you die. When we die, maybe the ones closest to us will mourn our death, will grieve our death for one, two, three, four, five, maybe 10 years and then life goes on and you're remembered no more. Everything vaporizes because we are weightless. Our lives are weightless. If we have not had God as the center and the weight of our lives, only that which you and I have done for him and through him and to him will remain. And yet we pursue our lives still by having God as just a concept, an idea and a theology. We want to choose the safest jobs that will give us the biggest bang and create a safe future. We want to push our children to pursue the best that they can do so their lives can also be safe and great and pursue careers even if they hate it so that they can have stability and security. Where is God in your decisions? Where is God in your marriage? Where is God in your work? Is God the weighty person in your day-today life? Otherwise, no matter what you say, he's just an idea and he's not a reality. And you may want to have the Isaiah's divine encounter in your own life. And God's glory, his weightiness ultimately was that he conquered sin and death. And how do we approach such a glorious God? You see this seraraphims um I haven't done much research into it but the little that I read they say they are these sinless angelic beings they have like six wings covering you know they cover their face and they even cover their feet and they are flying they can't even they don't even want to rest because of what they have witnessed is worship with reverence they cannot give us or challenge us with this question, how do we walk into worship? How do we walk into God's presence? Whether it's in your own personal prayer time, how do you approach going to God's presence? Is it a passing prayer on your way to work, a brief prayer before meals, or a a formal customary prayer in family worship? How do you prepare yourself to worship on a Sunday morning where you're going to get this glimpse of God? Now, all of these are going to change when this divine encounter happens. And for you and I, we need this every day. It is not just a one-time thing that we can look back and said, I had this encounter, you know, when I was 7 years old or I was college. We need this divine encounter every day. So the weightiness of God can come in because we have things that need to be displaced in our life every day that calls for humility that calls for accepting that we are not there. And if we feel we are already there then you're going to lose out on God displacing those things in your life which are not good for you and me. That's what the glory of God can do, my dear friends. And that's what is expected to happen in worship. And the second thing we're going to look at, we're going to move on to talk about is what happens to Isaiah as he moves from experiencing the glory of God. And once the weightiness of God comes in, what comes out is a sense of guilt. Verse 5 it says, "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." That is how Isaiah saw who God was. And the seraraphims when they saw God, they said this, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory." So something happened when the angelic beings saw God and Isaiah saw God. what they both experienced. One thing that caused the angelic beings to do what they did to cover themselves and for Isaiah to do what he is basically calling a curse on himself is that they experience radical beauty. You know he heard the seraphim call out holy, holy, holy. You know in Hebrew language often magnitude is conveyed through a doubling or repetition of words and even in the Greek New Testament and when Jesus says truly truly I say to you but nowhere in the Hebrew in the Bible is any quality tripled like this because that's how important this is. God isn't just holy says God is holy, holy, holy. It's a category beyond categories. So what is holiness? Hebrew scholars say the Hebrew word kadosh means on the one hand superlativeness, you know, infinitely unique superlativeness or something that's so distinct or set apart from everything else. There is absolutely no comparison to it. What that means is by saying that the love of God is holy means his love is so unique there is no comparison. The power of God is holy because his power is so unique and there is no comparison. The mercy of God is holy because that mercy you can never experience in any human relationships. And it says they're adoring his holiness. That holiness is so beautiful and worthy of admiration and they are adoring. We tend to adore something or we appreciate something when we have a benefit that comes from that. Isn't it? But here it says the seraraphim are adoring God not on a basis of cost benefit analysis not because God pays off in terms of power or approval or comfort or control or security or significance. They're just adoring him because of who he is. Because of the beauty of who he is. What good is it that it is calling for adoring? How in the world, you may ask, can someone find holiness, this unique infinite otherness of God, the superlativeness of God so beautiful and attractive in itself? You know the period in Jonathan Edwards, he points this out beautifully and this is what he says. As Jonathan Edwards points out, the power of God is something you could get excited about selfishly because it's of benefit to you. Oh, I have a powerful God. He's going to do something great and, you know, help me overcome these obstacles. The wisdom of God is something you actually can get excited about selfishly, too, because it could be a benefit to you. Oh, I have a God who is wise and he's going to give me guidance in choosing a career, in choosing a life partner, in choosing my next job. You can even get excited about the mercy of God selfishly because it's of benefit to you. Oh, now God's mercy is going to help me get rid of my guilt. But Jonathan Edwards says, "Holiness is of no use to us at all." God's holiness is of no benefit to you. It's nothing but a threat. Actually, anyone who God's who worships God's holiness and adors God's holiness is loving him just for who he is in himself because it's of no help to you. Someone says, "How in the world could you possibly get to that place where you see the beauty of his holiness?" Especially when you think of my issues. Do you know what holiness is? His holiness is superlative. His holiness is the fact that you cannot beat God because his power is holy power, omnip. And you can't question God because his wisdom is holy wisdom. And you can't escape God because his presence, his holy presence, his holiness is nothing but a threat. But how could it be beautiful? The whole earth is full of his glory. It's beautiful because his holiness transforms us. It's his holiness that drives us to the cross. And it's hol his holiness that enables us to taste his glory. My dear brothers, we're made to behold glory. The cross was the ultimate demonstration of the holiness of God and the glory of God. And Jesus Christ, the vertical distance that separated us from God because of his holiness and our lack of holiness was completely destroyed. In Jesus Christ, the horizontal distance that separated us from being able to enter the presence of God like Isaiah did was absolutely abridged so that through the cross we can actually enter into the holy presence of God and catch a glimpse of the glory of God. And that demands worship, my dear friends. And when you see that holiness immediately gives you a sense of your guilt and that's what happens to Isaiah. First he gets to experience radical beauty and that from that follows radical humility just like this journalist had with Mandela. He says woe to me. Woe to me basically says I don't deserve to live. I'm ruined. I'm undone. I for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. What's happening here? You know, you always find when you're in the presence of someone bigger than yourself can be very intimidating, right? like this interview were found perhaps when you were growing up if you were in school and you were a a Ace plus student a 4.0 GPA or a 4.2 GPA and then you finish high school and you go to college and suddenly realize you're not the only 4.0 4.2 GPA kid. You see someone who is a 4.6 GPA student. You see kids from all over the country who are 10 times smarter than you and all of a sudden you who are the star in your class or in your school you're just another ordinary person or this is something that happens again in games in sports in drafts when you're when you're a star basketball player you get picked as the number one draft by a team that's usually tanked and you go in there was a team. Um, the Spurs, they got uh there was a big uh raving about a player they got, you know, 7 foot three or four. I don't know. Don't don't come and tell me later. I said this wrong. The Spurs fans here. I didn't mean to offend you. They say he's the one. He's the magic. He mean he can do everything. He's the tallest guy in the team and he probably and he is. He's an extremely great player. But we all saw what happened in the Olympics when he was playing for his French team and playing against um the United States and uh our very own Steph Curry was there too. You see, you can be a great person, but when you enter into the presence of someone bigger than you, greater than you, all of a sudden you then feel how small you are. Isn't it? That's what happened to Isaiah. What we know about Isaiah um is from tradition, Jewish tradition says Isaiah was actually from a royal family. Now Jewish tradition says his father was a brother to the king. So he was one of the elites. And we know about Isaiah from his book. He's he's he's an artistic intellectual communicative genius. You know, if you write a book and if people are still reading it after 3,000 years, you're somebody, isn't it? It was an oral culture, too. And he was a man. He was he was a guy who was born with a silver spoon. He could talk his way out of anything. But he gets into the presence of God and he realizes that his mouth is the problem and not just his lips. says, "All of my people are unclean." Because he realizes his lips and we realize your lips and my lips are in fact the Bible goes a step further. It talks about another organ behind our lips. Our tongue is the most powerful weapon that we have and we use to inflict tremendous pain on others. Our lips that don't speak truth or hurt others or lips of others that hurt us. Our lips that speak proud things about us. In fact, when it starts and talks about King Uzziah, he did amazing things. He was a great guy but he approached God not with this reverence of worship frivolously and immediately he contracts leprosy because he relied on his glory and Isaiah just at that moment his whole life rail went before him in a flash and guilt came up. You know guilt can do two things. It can move us away from God or move us toward God. And for Isaiah, it brought him humility and he he was able to confess. His worship of God's glory and holiness led to guilt which moved to confession and that's when something amazing happened which is the grace of God and that's our third point we are going to look at verse six onwards says then one of the seraraphim flew to me having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar and he touched my mouth and said behold this has touched your lips your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for 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 remembers very much what happened to King Uzziah. The first thought that strikes his mind when he gets this vision is if King Uzziah who went into God's presence could be struck with leprosy w to me I'm going to get killed because Uzziah was actually a great man. He did so much good for the people. He built this nation. He cared about them for 50 years. And that was his fate. and I know what I have done with my mouth, with my lips and my life, I'm going to be killed instantly and rather than that he receives grace. The seraraphim flows to him and the seraraphim has in his hand burning coal which even the seraraphim can't touch and uses a tongue and touches his mouth. You know the fire in the Bible most of the time is used for judgment. But here this fire cleanses that very same lip that he said was a symbol of his insufficiency. The seraraphim touches and he experiences it says your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for. And we all know how that was possible for you and me. When we come to that place where God is no longer a concept, when we realize the weightiness of God, how he is so perfect, so holy, so powerful, and how when he comes into our life, we get the same effect and recognize instantly our heart's deceitfulness, our sins, how we have hurt each other in our marriage, in our friendships, uh, and those outside and how we have lived our lives selfishly. And when we think that this weightiness of God is going to crush us, this fire of God is going to come and destroy us, we experience grace when we humble and confess that fire instead of falling on us fell on Jesus Christ who atoned for your sin and my sin. And that's the beauty of Christianity. That's the beauty of the love of God. There is no other philosophy or religion that proclaims this concept of grace. We don't have to work hard and do karma to earn God's grace in our life. It is all done by Christ on the cross. And Isaiah receives grace. The fire cleansed him and freed him. And there are three things that Isaiah does in response. His life is now transformed. He now has a new vision. He has a new purpose because he demonstrates three things. And that's what God expects of you and I when we have this encounter with him. Availability, dependability, and expectability. The first thing Isaiah says is here I am. Whatever you want God, I'm ready to do. Now, he is not trying to shape the God concept to live his life in a particular way so he can pursue happiness. Says, God, whatever it is, let me do it. I'm ready to do. That's the first thing that would happen in our divine encounter. It may be costly. It may be difficult. It may go contrary to every grain of human wisdom and your wisdom. But are you available to go where God asks you to go? to take a job that he asks you to take that may not make sense financially but has tremendous impact in the world. It serves a need. It meets the hunger and the brokenness of the world. Are you willing to go and pursue a career path that is going to not be the most prominent, successful, highpaying one, but the most rewarding one because it blesses somebody else because God is now changed your heart. And when God when you have that divine encounter and many saints have shared this, he removes the joy out of your heart from everything you wanted to do until that point of time. There is nothing that will give you joy unless you land on that thing that you were made for and God wants you to live for. And that requires a boldness that comes from having such a divine encounter. Are you available this morning for God to do that? Second is dependability. God says, "I have a job for you, Isaiah. Here's the job profile." After he says, "Here I am. Send me." He says, "I'm going to give you a job. It's not just the toughest job. It's actually a fruitless job. You know, I want to go I want you to go and tell these people who are going to be so obstinate. You're going to be preaching to them for years after years after years. And every time they're going to tell you, "I don't want to hear what you have to say. I don't want to hear this. I don't want to hear this." And they're not going to change. It's going to get so bad that at one point you're going to have to tell them, "God is done with you. He's going to give you what you want." The worst thing God could give ever anybody is what that unregenerate heart really wants. Does Isaiah take this job? We know he did because there are another 50 plus chapters that come after this where Isaiah goes doing that very same thing God calls him to do being so dependable. There was no individual fulfillment here at work for him. But that's what happens. You don't care. You do. That's not what you want because you've tasted the weightiness of God in your life. And if you're going and volunteering somewhere with your time, whether it's at church or anywhere, why not work, you're not going to volunteer around your travel plans? You may want to work your travel plans around your volunteering duties. When you're planning or pledging to give money for philanthropy, whether it's to church or outside or other nonprofits, instead of just giving what you're not going to miss anyway, you're going to give in a way that it's going to make a difference and pinch you in your life. You're not going to take up jobs even whether it's in our church that almost gets no applause. You know, you're not going to be seen or doing it, but you would still love to do it. And you know why you would do this? Because it's not really worthless. There is hope and there is grace for everyone. That very last chapter, he says, "These people are going to be so stubborn. They're not going to listen to you. I'm going to keep chopping them down. In fact, right now at the very gates or the border of Judah or the Azerian Empire, they're just going to swip wipe down and chop all these people down to the barest root and a stock is all that's going to remain. You're going to see that Isaiah. But guess what? There's life in that. There's a small remnant who are still there. And I'm going to show my grace to them and through them. And out of that is going to come a bigger redemption for the rest of humanity. I'm eventually going to create an entirely new heavens and a new earth. That's what happens. And God calls you and I, my dear friends, if you've had this divine encounter, to not just live an ordinary life, but a missional life. John Piper says this so beautifully. He says, "You are not ready to say send me until you have said woe is me." Let me ask you my dear friends by way of application. Do you believe in God or have you encountered him? Is he just still an idea or a concept? Or have you let that weightiness of God sink into your life? If not, I would ask you and encourage you to reach out to someone and spend time just reading this very chapter today and ask God to show you his glory which none of us can do and only he could. Or if you are in school or seeking work and you're asking what do I want to do or what is God very what is God sending me to do before you make your next big decision pause and pray and pray this prayer that Isaiah did here I am Lord send me where you will and wait for those doors to open and don't choose your next step solely based on comfort or saf safety or success or security, but on your calling. And for those of you who are still in school or college, let me ask you, who is shaping your identity? Is the feed on your social media shaping your identity or is it the glory of God that is shaping your identity? You know Isaiah was gifted, educated, influential but none of that mattered when he saw God's glory. He realized I am not the center of my life and I don't want to be the center of the life of my friends or social media. God is. I have a social media challenge for you. For those of you who are so active in social media, how about this week instead of posting a selfie or an opinion or whatever cool thing you usually do, share one scripture or moment where God challenged your comfort zone and declare that and proclaim, God, you can change my agenda and share it and let those who don't know you No. And for those parents once again, what are you teaching your kids every day? Is it to perform for God, perform for yourselves, perform for the world, or to be present and experience God's weightiness in their lives? You know, Isaiah didn't clean himself up to be accepted. Grace came to him in his guilt. The cold touched his lips before he said, "I am." So make your prayers with your children count. Not just on their performance but on the grace of