Isaiah 6 Finished

I would like to finish Isaiah 6 today by looking at the call of Isaiah and the parallels to our call by God to ministry for him.

 ⁸Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.


I love this, we see after Isaiah confesses his sins and God forgives him, he is now ready for ministry. It is after Isaiah’s heart is right he is ready to work for God. This is Isaiah’s call to the ministry. I love that God asks him and he is ready to go right away.


 ⁹And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.
 ¹⁰Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.


Here God is telling Isaiah that it will not be easy. He says the people will hear but not understand.  God says that people are fat and comfortable and are going to complain that his preaching will hurt their ears or is too long winded and they will shut their eyes and will not see the truth.  To all my preacher and missionary friends out there, does this sound like what is happening in our churches every Sunday?  Every time I preach or teach, at least one person will say I am too long winded.


 ¹¹Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,
 ¹²And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.
 ¹³But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.

In these last verses we see that Isaiah is a little discouraged by what God had to say and ask how long he has to do this.  God’s answer is to the end.  I want to put that this is just like God’s call on all of our lives.  God is asking us to do something for him and people are not going to understand and will give you a hard time about doing God’s work.  And as our Awana Commander says all the time, I have never seen retirement in the Bible; just like these verses say, we are in it till the end. I know a lot of my readers are senior saints and even now you have several more years of ministry for the Lord, as we all do, we must persevere till the end.

In vs.13 there is one last idea, and in it God says there will be a tenth that shall return.  Isaiah is going to do all this work and preaching and he is only going to get a tenth of the people.  Just like today, we preach and work with many people and only have a small amount of people commit their lives for the Lord in return, but just like Isaiah we are called by God to do it anyway for His Glory.  We must persevere.  I have a hard time with preachers who say everything will be rosy when you become a Christian, this verse shows us that this is not true, but we are to work until the end.