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*Intro*
We have been talking about the Great Commission as part of our series called, “Back to the Basics: Knowing why you believe what you believe.”
Our purpose here at Living Hope and the purpose of our lives is to go and make disciples of Jesus Christ.
Living for anything less than what God wants for us is not living.
If you buy a car and it sits in the garage, someone might say, “It looks nice in your garage, but that’s not what it was made for!”
And if we are living to make much of ourselves and we want God to help us do that, we will be disappointed.
God doesn’t exist simply to be available for us so that we can live for our goals.
We exist to be available for Him so that He can accomplish His goals and purposes through us!
And His goal, as we saw last week, is that God would shake the world through us.
The disciples would have been paralyzed by that command if Christ had not promised to give them the power to accomplish that goal: His indwelling presence.
However, I want to back up a little and talk about how we can get to the place of the Great Commission, where we want to go and make disciples?
And the text is found in Isaiah 6.
I mentioned this text last week.
Today we are going to look at “How God shakes our soul to shake the world.”
God needs to constantly shake our soul.
This is because we are constantly letting other things shake us.
Troubles shake us.
False comforts shake us and move us.
Our guilt weighs us down.
People may shake us.
When we let everything but God shake us, we are left often numb toward God.
The Great Commission is far from my heart and lives.
We feel cold and dry.
We become self-absorbed.
We live entitled to everything.
We become self-sufficient.
We think we know what is good for our lives better than God does.
And we start to live for ourselves.
So what is the cure for all this?
It is allowing God to shake our soul again with an encounter with Himself.
I want you to see that in Isaiah’s life here in Isaiah 6.
How does God shake our soul?
Let’s start with this:
*I.
**God confronts us with His glorious holiness (vv.1-4)*
How does God shake our soul?
It happens by first seeing Him for who He is.
The year is 740 BC.
In about 20 years, the nation of Assyria will come and take over Israel.
Israel has been on the decline spiritually and morally.
Isaiah prophesies that judgment is coming if the people do not repent.
Does Israel repent?
No.
They are unresponsive and resistant to God’s call to come back to Him.
Now to make matters worse, one of the best kings of Judah, Uzziah, has just died.
Uzziah was king for 52 years, since he was 16 years old (2 Chron.
26:3).
In fact, “Judah had known no king like Uzziah since the time of Solomon.
He had been an efficient administrator and an able military leader.
Under his leadership Judah had grown in every way (2 Chr.
26:1–15).
He had been a true king.”[1]
He was also a builder and warrior.
Uzziah did a lot of things right, but in the end, he grew proud and contracted leprosy (2 Chron.
26:16-23).
As a result, the people are shaken up.
When God’s not shaking you and changing your reality, you put your hope in something else.
You live for something else.
And when what you’re living for isn’t God and it is taken away from you, you are shaken up like a kid whose toy is taken away from him.
It is devastating.
So they are shaken up when their beloved King is dead.
What’s going to happen now?
Assyria is threatening and our leader is gone!
So in this time of uncertainty, when everything is falling apart, God takes Isaiah, whether in a vision or dream, waking or sleeping, we are not sure, to a vision of something truly secure.
Notice that in the year the king died, Isaiah sees a vision of the true King.
He is sitting on a throne.
Isn’t that great?
He’s not biting His nails.
He’s not pacing around or wringing His hands, wondering what to do next.
He is seated, settled and secure.
Absolutely sovereign.
Absolutely in control.
Have you ever seen Air Force fighters scramble when enemies appear on the radar?
Listen, God never scrambles.
He is never caught off-guard.
God rules our world with His feet up!
What is God saying?
He’s calling people to Himself again, saying, people, look: Uzziah is shakeable.
He is weak, dead of leprosy.
Only the true King, God Himself, is not.
Your earthly hope is dead and all our earthly hopes can die, but the heavenly King is alive and reigning.
Put your trust in the unshakeable King.
Wait, how can Isaiah see God? Can anyone truly see God? John 1:18 says that no one has ever seen God.
However, John 12:41 tells that what Isaiah actually saw was the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.
So before Nazareth and Bethlehem and Jerusalem, this was a vision of Jesus Christ.
Isaiah uses the word “Lord” which is different from capitalized LORD (that is, God’s personal name, Yahweh).
The lowercase spelling refers more to God’s title than His name.
So Isaiah sees God as a ruler and sovereign.
Notice “high and lifted up.”
This emphasizes God’s transcendence.
God is both transcendent and immanent.
Transcendent means that God is “up there,” above us.
Immanent refers more to God being “down here,” with us.
Notice both here.
God is “high and lifted up,” but also “the whole earth [down here] is full of His glory!” Sometimes we emphasize one over the other.
Certain groups emphasize God as being transcendent over His immanence.
I grew up in a church like that.
God is far away.
Respect Him.
Don’t get too close.
Make the sign of the cross when you move from one side of the altar to the other.
Don’t get God mad.
But in many evangelical churches, we have gone the other extreme.
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