Good morning and happy New Year. This is our first Sunday of 2025. You know, a while back, I asked Aaron if I could preach a sermon that I, you know, prepared five years ago and never got a chance to preach. And it turns out that a lot changes in five years. So after I got scheduled to preach it, I looked at my old notes and I was like, you know what? I’m not going to preach this. I’m going to rewrite the whole thing. So I did. Perspectives change a lot in five years.
Now, we’re going to be looking at Isaiah 6 this morning, the first eight verses, and we’re going to see an event which changes the perspective of God’s people. Go ahead and flip there with me.
Now, prior to this chapter, in chapters one through five, Isaiah issues an indictment of the people of Judah on God’s behalf over their wickedness. And this comes to a head in chapter five. So in chapter five, God compares the Israelites to a vineyard that he, the gardener, had lovingly taken care of, had set up protection for, and had given it every best chance to yield lots of good grapes. But after all that work, instead of yielding grapes that would be sweet and good to use for wine, the vineyard is said to have yielded sour, wild, inedible grapes.
You see, God had given the people of Israel every earthly advantage in order for them to be fruitful: protection, his word, his covenant presence. But despite all of that, the fruit of the people of Israel was not there. And so chapter five leaves off with this depressing announcement of the coming judgment on the people of Israel.
And then chapter six happens. We’re going to come back to that. We’re going to look at that today. But I also want to peek ahead to chapter seven to see what sandwiches this passage in here, because chapter seven is probably still fresh on your minds. That is where Isaiah foretells of the coming of Emmanuel, right? God with us; he will be born to a virgin. It’s the promise of the coming of Jesus Christ, who, Isaiah then goes on a few chapters later to tell us, will be the wonderful counselor, Prince of Peace, Almighty God.
And despite the wickedness of his people, God is not content then to remain distant and to remain unapproachable. His intent is that we, as those created in his image, would be with him. But because we are so incapable of putting ourselves where he is, he puts himself in Jesus Christ where we are, which is, of course, exactly what we just celebrated in Christmas.
And so Isaiah pivots from speaking of the doom of judgment in chapter five to the beginning of giving the glorious promise of God with us, starting in chapter seven. And chapter six, then, is that pivot. What we get here is an account of Isaiah being commissioned for this work of preaching a gospel message. And seeing as this is the beginning of a new year, I wanted to bring us back to the beginning of the preaching of the gospel.
You see, even though this is the New Testament, or, sorry, this is the Old Testament. I know my Testaments. This is the Old Testament. Isaiah is a gospel preacher. Now, the Gospel is all over the Old Testament. It’s in the writings of David, it’s in the writings of Moses, it’s in the writings elsewhere. But I don’t know that any other individual could have been referred to as a gospel preacher prior to Isaiah.
In Isaiah, we see a man whose ministry is unprecedented in its emphasis on the coming of the Messiah and the suffering of that Messiah for the benefit and salvation of God’s very much undeserving, but also very much beloved people. So our aim this morning, then, is to consider the very unusual circumstances in which Isaiah is called into this ministry and for us to find encouragement from that. So please follow along as I read the first eight verses of chapter six.
“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. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face, 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; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called out, and the house was filled with smoke. 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.’ Then one of the seraphim 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 atoned for.’ And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here I am. Send me.'”
Pray with me.
Lord, we are people with unclean lips. I am a man with unclean lips. And we certainly dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And we see the dilemma that Isaiah faces in this passage. We ask that you would minister to us your goodness this morning and help us to see from your word your heart and your ongoing love toward us. We pray this in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.
So immediately in verse one, we are anchored chronologically in history. So the king Uzziah died in the year 740 BC. Now, many commentators—and I would agree—say that chapter six is actually the beginning of Isaiah’s prophetic ministry. You have chapters one through five, which come as a prologue, probably written after this, as an introduction to the prophecy. And what they do is establish the context in which Isaiah is going to be ministering.
And we talked about this: it’s the faithlessness of God’s people. Now, because the book of Isaiah is about the coming king in the midst of that faithlessness, what we see then is that we don’t start with the story of Isaiah because it’s not about Isaiah. So very purposely, then, Isaiah’s commission as a prophet comes into the story right here, which is why we’re looking at where it falls in between these two chapters.
And it’s important as a way for Isaiah’s original hearers to believe that when Isaiah says he speaks on behalf of God, he does indeed speak on behalf of God. But the events here are remarkable even more so, not because of what we learn about Isaiah, but because of what we learn about Isaiah’s God.
So what is going on? King Uzziah was one of the most successful kings of Judah. He was king over the southern kingdom of Israel. And at the time of his death, he had been on the throne a remarkable 52 years. Do you know who the President of the United States was 52 years ago? Anyone know that off the top of their head? Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon. Who remembers when Nixon was in the White House? Anyone here? Okay, we got not many of us. Most of us don’t.
And for the people of Judah, few of them would have remembered a time when Uzziah had not been king over them. Now, after these decades of near unprecedented stability for the nation, Uzziah does something very interesting in the closing years of his life. In 2 Chronicles chapter 26, he decides that he is such an exceptional king, such an extraordinary man, that the rules of the Levitical priesthood don’t apply to him. And so, while the Levitical priests are in a line telling him, “Don’t do it,” he makes to go and burn incense in the temple, something that you can’t do unless you’re in the priesthood. And as he does this, he is struck with leprosy. He lives out his final years in seclusion, slowly dying of what at that time was an incurable and horrific disease.
Now, in addition to being a really fascinating piece of history, it’s also relevant historical backdrop for Isaiah’s vision here. Because what you have is what at that time would have been the greatest man in Israel, the king. And he’s going into the earthly temple to present himself before the earthly manifest presence of God. And he is struck with terminal illness and judgment as a result. What is Isaiah to expect then in his vision?
As he is brought into the heavenly temple, he sees not just the shrouded earthly manifestation of God; no, he is brought face to face with God in his full manifestation of power. And what an overwhelming vision it was. In verse one, we get a very limited but vivid description of God himself. First of all, he is the king. He is high and lifted up, and he is on a throne. This would have put the politics into perspective for Isaiah, right? The people of Judah are anxious. Why? Because they’re anticipating the death of Uzziah. They know it’s coming.
And despite his failings, he had been a faithful king of the people for over 50 years. They had unprecedented military victory. The borders of the country had been expanded back out to about their widest border, that they had been matching the time of Solomon. But the people also know their history, and they know that when Judah changes kings, it’s often a messy, bloody business. But here you have in Isaiah’s vision a reminder: the real king is God himself, the king over all kings.
Now, how much of our anxiety would be avoided if we were just to be more convicted of that? God’s ultimate kingship, a king who is incomparably stronger and wiser than any elected official or any prince in this nation or any other nation on this planet. So that’s the start here. Okay, this is where it starts. Isaiah goes on. It’s significant that God is on the throne because you’ll remember that in the earthly temple, there is no throne.
In Solomon’s temple, there was this thing called the mercy seat, which was where the Ark of the Covenant was. But there was no throne. The throne could only mean that he is having a vision of some other place, some spiritual realm, the actual temple. This dichotomy of the earthly versus the heavenly temple, the earthly versus the heavenly realms, should be very familiar to us, right? Because we’ve been studying that as a theme that’s come up repeatedly in the book of Hebrews, especially in Hebrews chapter nine. It talks about the contrast between the earthly tabernacle and the heavenly tabernacle.
Well, this heavenly temple, the real temple, is where God then chooses to manifest his unfiltered, brilliant glory. And so unparalleled is his majesty that the train of his robe fills the whole temple. Right? Like, if any of us, if any other person on this planet were to wear clothes like that, it would be ridiculous, right? A robe that just fills up the whole place. Only God could wear attire like that and have it be deemed appropriate.
So here is God, and he’s not hiding the fact that he’s in charge. He’s not hiding the fact that he has dominion over all of creation. He wants that to be Isaiah’s takeaway: the magnificence and the majesty.
Now, interestingly enough, though, that is as much as Isaiah has to say directly on the appearance of God in this passage, which to me, thinking through that, I’m thinking, Isaiah, wait a minute, you see God face to face. You got 13 verses that you’re talking about this encounter. You only give us one verse actually telling us directly about what God looked like. Give us a little more here, right? But it’s interesting, though, that he doesn’t.
And instead, you get in the next three verses, verses 2, 3, and 4, more description of the physicality and the actions of the seraphim than you get of God himself. Now, what’s going on here? Evidently, the description of the seraphim and the reaction to God tell us more about the reality of God than Isaiah would have been able to convey were he to go on directly describing what he saw. It’s kind of like if you see a picture of the Grand Canyon and you can’t really get a sense of how big it is because it’s just like a bunch of dirt and rocks and stuff, and it looks like there’s something there until you realize that there’s this little speck in the corner, and that little speck in the corner is a human being.
Only then do you actually get a sense of the scale of it. So here you have the seraphim acting as that little speck next to the manifest presence of God. And so much attention is spent on the angels because it helps us to then scale and understand the holiness of God.
So let’s look at these angels. You got two of them, and verse two tells us that each of these angels has six wings. And what’s extraordinary here is that only two of these wings are made for flying. Okay? The other two sets of wings God has given these angelic creatures are to serve a different purpose: they’re to shield them from God’s glory. So God has anatomically designed them such that they could be in his presence and enjoy his manifest glory without them being hurt by it or appearing to be unseemly before him.
And now, mind you, these are two perfect, sinless creatures of the highest order. Their feet don’t even need to touch the ground because they can fly, and yet they have to cover their feet in God’s presence because even the idea that their feet could have gone someplace unclean and they could have thus somehow brought some of that uncleanness with them into God’s presence is so unseemly that God sees fit to give them an extra pair of appendages, their wings, just to cover their feet up.
And that might seem strange, but it’s similar to a familiar story of Moses and the burning bush, right? In Exodus chapter three, do you remember that where Moses encounters this burning bush, it’s a manifestation of God? And what does God tell Moses to do? First thing, remove your sandals because you are standing on holy ground. Evidently, there’s this sense in which walking in this unclean world makes us capable of bringing some of that uncleanness with us into the very presence of God. And to do so would be a scandal. We don’t want to track that in.
Now, similarly, these angels have another set of wings for the singular purpose of covering their faces. And it’s the same idea, right? You have these angelic eyes which might theoretically have looked on some uncleanness, some indecency in this world. How unseemly then, with those same eyes, would it be for those same eyes to look on the holy, unfiltered glory of God?
Now, taken as a whole, this is odd, right? This feels odd to me. This is like a—there’s like taboos here being established that are very difficult for me to understand, but it points us to a reality. It tips us off to something important to understand about holiness. Holiness includes sinlessness; it includes righteousness. But there’s something more to holiness than that. Only we’re going to look at that as we keep developing this picture of the seraphim. But keep that in mind: there’s more to holiness than just sinlessness.
Interestingly enough, the title used then for these angels here is seraphim. And this is the only place in the Bible where this term is used. And that means, actually, if you’ve ever sung songs or seen references to the seraphim, whether you or the songwriter realizes it or not, it’s all a reference back to this passage. Ultimately, what you have then is the term seraphim, which means burning one. All right? So there’s this idea of fire that carries the idea of judgment and purification. And these angels are said to be burning ones. It’s as if they are so pure and so holy in their appearance that physically, it’s as if they are on fire.
Again, that helps us to understand that this holiness of God is about more than just not being sinful. There’s this fundamental intensity of goodness in God’s character where it’s not just the absence of sin; it’s the presence of this clean goodness that comes from outside of our very reality, as it were, and injects that goodness into our reality. And the weight of that is not lost on these angels. They’re the burning ones, but they’re still not more holy than God is. They’re like not even a speck in that picture of the Grand Canyon.
So the next verse, they’re seen to ever be calling to each other, “Holy, holy, holy.” And if we read this too fast, we might think to ourselves, boy, that does sound robotic, right? Those angels are just telling, “Holy, holy, holy.” That’s their job. They’re running their program. But remember, what we are looking at is two of the highest of the order of created beings, right? And they have a depth of understanding of who it is they see and in whose presence they are.
And these ones find themselves overcome with the joy and the moment of being in that presence. These ones are the ones saying that he’s thrice holy, right? He’s holy, holy, holy. He’s not just holy. He’s not just holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy.
And so let’s look at that word “holy.” It seems to not just be an adjective used to describe God. It’s not like a layer of paint you put on a house, right? This holiness seems to be part of the very substance of who God is. It’s this pure goodness that exists before and outside of this universe in which we inhabit. And because of that, God will always have—even in eternity—this quality of depth, this quality of otherness to all those from the created realm, even the angels.
And so the last thing that the angels say is amazing because what they say next is that the whole earth is full of his glory. So while we dare not bring any of our uncleanness into this otherworldly, godly holy presence, God is continually bringing his goodness into the same unclean world. You got that? Like, that is astonishing.
Now, with that in mind, then, with that as our framing, I just want to briefly consider a question that we do hear often. We sometimes even ask ourselves, if God is so good, how can there be so much evil in this world? Right? But to ask that question is to fundamentally misunderstand the unrighteousness of mankind and also to fundamentally misunderstand what exactly happened at the Fall when Adam ate the forbidden fruit. You see, at no point in all of the history of the existence of this world has there been any other source of goodness than God.
Whether before the Fall or after the Fall, any goodness in this mortal realm of ours is the product of God. This morning, if you’re able to taste and enjoy food, coffee, orange juice, whatever, your ability to enjoy that and the presence of those good things, those are there because at any given moment, God is actively ministering to you the ability to enjoy those things, and he’s actively sustaining those substances, the atoms by which those hold together. He is causing the force of gravity even to hold you to this planet so you don’t drift off while you’re trying to enjoy them, right? Like, every good thing about this realm in which we inhabit is a direct product of God’s constant intentional force of will.
And we see this in the New Testament, right? The book of Colossians, chapter one, it says of Jesus Christ that He holds all things together, present tense, present continual tense. James chapter one tells us that every good thing is from above; it’s from God. And to put some emotive force into this, in the Sermon on the Mount, which is Matthew chapter six, we are told by Christ not to worry. Why? Because God regards very seriously his ministry to the sparrows to make sure that they have enough food to eat.
And he regards very seriously his ministry to the plants in nature, to the grass of the field, to make sure that they have flowers. How much more seriously does he take his ministry of goodness to us? And how rightly is it then that the seraphim in this passage in Isaiah 6 say that the whole earth, every bit of it, is brimming full with God’s glory, overflowing with the evidence of his goodness and his power and his wisdom.
So if we rightly understand the Fall and Adam’s sin and that resulting curse, we must understand that something very good and very clean was made to be something corrupt and unclean. And God, in His wisdom, designated pinpricks of futility, ways and circumstances in which he would now choose to become self-limiting of his exercise of his abundant goodness. Thus entered pain, toil and work, difficulty in childbirth and raising children, all forms of violence, disease, waste, decay—all this stuff.
So Adam had chosen in his rejection of God, and what we would ourselves have chosen were we in the same position. And yet even still, as you look around this same cursed world, even now, the whole earth is full of God’s glory. The goodness is abundant. And so yes, God in His goodness had to teach us what a scandal the Fall was. The object lesson was necessary and remains necessary. But he is still our good King.
Now think back to Genesis 2. In those early days of the Garden of Eden, before the Fall, Adam was said to walk with God in the coolness of the day, right? Emmanuel, God with us, was a reality for Adam. He walked with God every day. He saw his manifest presence as if he were talking man to man, friend to friend. But that was lost. And even now, we struggle to grasp what a heinous thing it is that we might have chosen this godless, self-centered existence.
How could a good God not take action to teach us how wickedly and faithlessly we have been to reject Emmanuel? And yet with all the evil we now perceive in the world, how obvious is it that we have a loving God? And what a wonder it is that there is a day where we can wake up in warm beds. Days where we can feel confident knowing where our next meal is coming from. Days when we can wake up and know that we have those around us who love us and whom we love. These are not just graces that are granted to believers in Jesus Christ. These are given to all people.
All of humankind enjoys these things to one extent or another. And again, in the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 5, Jesus tells us that God in His love sends sun and rain on who? The just and the unjust. No matter who you are on this planet, if you’ve ever walked and enjoyed the benefits of sun and rain, eaten any food, or even just enjoyed a brisk walk in the morning sun, no matter who you are, you have enjoyed the benefits of the glory that fills this earth.
And so, getting back to this question of if God is so good, how can there be so much evil in the world? I think we would do better to ask, if man is so wicked, how can there be so much good in the world? And while we are so bent on self and self-satisfaction, how is it that this holy, holy, holy God could ever, even at this very moment, be actively working so many of the details of our life for our good, from the courses of what we will do and what we will be and what we have been down to the very atoms that hold us together now?
Dusting off the original version of my sermon that I’d written five years ago, it made me think about how much this church has changed in the last five years. And perhaps one of the biggest transformations we’ve seen as a church is that I think that we have really shaken off a lot of the ignorance of the presence of evil in the world that we might have had five years ago. Many of us have seen more evil in the last five years than we’ve seen in all the years prior.
We’ve had dark days with illness and all sorts of other things that have come upon us, now realizing that we have a God who’s holy, holy, holy. His goodness, his capacity for goodness is not rooted in this realm, right? So this otherness that is self-contained, it’s drawn from outside this reality. It will never be corrupted; it will never run out. That well will never run dry because he’s not bound to the same principles of corruption that we are bound to, that we have come to know. And he is in himself able to keep giving goodness now.
And let me tell you this: were he not always continually sustaining the goodness of the world in which we live, then our most evil day would be nothing in comparison to the horror that the very best day would bring us apart from God intentionally manifesting that goodness to us all, right? So this, this here is a God worth trusting. This is a God worth worshiping.
And in verse four, the seraphim do worship as they speak to each other. And what we find then is that worship, that heartfelt worship, manifests itself in visible power, right? There’s something powerful in the heavenlies that happens when you offer to God acceptable praise, telling of God’s character, who he is according to knowledge and joy. And in this case, it causes the foundations of the heavenly temples to shake.
I don’t think we usually think of worship like this. We don’t think of worship as an emanation of power. But when you or I offer God acceptable worship, which is the fruit of our lips which acknowledge his name (Hebrews chapter 13), there is unseen but real manifest power that goes out as a result of that. This is the very essence of what is happening when we go into the world and tell people of God’s love, which is sharing the gospel.
This God-shaking and quaking happens in the spiritual realms, and as we say out loud the realities which we treasure, and that quaking carries with it the power to cause others to see that and to know that and even themselves to come and treasure that as well.
And there’s yet another interesting manifestation of the power of worship here in this passage. God’s presence fills the temple in a special way that it has this worship. See that? The house is filled with smoke. And this is supposed to put us in mind of the Old Testament when Solomon commissioned the temple and the presence of God came in this haze of smoke.
Well, it would seem that there is a spiritual reality which is that the pure, heartfelt worship of God results in the presence of God in a unique way. Now, if the holy angels, the very top of the created order, are overcome by the work of God to give him this sort of praise, how much more fitting is it that we should be praising him as well?
And how much greater even is the promise that we have than that the angels have? You see, when I used to read passages where Jesus would tell us that in heaven we would be like the angels, I’d always think, yeah, but I want wings. I won’t be able to fly. But you know what? I don’t want six wings. I’d rather have none. Because if I have no wings, that means that one day when I am in God’s presence, I will need no wings to cover my face.
I will need no wings to cover my feet. I will see God face to face, and so will you. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you will see him. You won’t need to cover anything. There will be no potential for shame, no accounting for theoretical uncleanness, not even the thought given to the possibility that you might track any of that into the presence of God.
The full promise of Emmanuel is going to be realized again, and we will be able to see God face to face and walk with him and know him. Now, how worthy is this holy, holy, holy God of the worship of humankind? Now then, we move on to verse five because we get back to Isaiah.
And Isaiah, coming into this heavenly temple, perhaps remembering the leprosy that struck King Uzziah, who had attempted to desecrate the earthly temple, Isaiah’s response is about the only response he could have given. What does he do? He pronounces a curse on himself. He gives himself up for lost. Why? Because he knows he is a man of unclean lips. He dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips. So even if he weren’t sinning with his words and actions, the people around him were.
And certainly, he has done something here indecent and unseemly. And he has looked upon, with the same eyes that have looked upon all that other filth in the world, he has looked upon the holy, holy God of his vision—holy, holy, holy God of his vision.
Now there’s this miracle that unfolds in Isaiah’s heart, though. It’s this dread, this miracle of dread and self-awareness along with divine awareness of God. And what happens next then is stunning, right? Because one of these burning ones, these angels, takes a coal out of the heavenly altar and touches Isaiah’s mouth with it, and he declares him free from guilt.
Hebrews chapter one tells us that the angels are ministering spirits sent out to serve those who believe in Christ. There’s probably no better actual physical picture of that happening than right here, where the angel actually brings the coal to Isaiah’s lips.
Let’s think about what that means, though. Okay, so you have the altar in the Old Testament in the temple there. And that altar is where you would take the entrails and the blood of your slaughtered animals. And the actual bodies would actually go outside the temple, right, or the tabernacle. But you’d bring just the blood in. And the same blood then would also be used to… you’d smear it on the altar and you would also use it and smear it on the priests as a sign of their consecration.
See, the priests weren’t righteous in and of themselves to be able to perform the worship that they had to do in the presence of God; they needed to have this alien righteousness, in this case from bulls or goats or oxen. And then on the basis of the purity of those animals, they could come into the earthly presence and fulfill their temple duties. It starts with Aaron, Moses’ brother, and it goes all the way down through the priesthood. And it’s continuing at the time that Isaiah is writing this.
But here we are when we’re not in the earthly temple. Now, in the book of Hebrews, we’ve been studying this dichotomy between the earthly and the heavenly temple. So tell me, whose blood is on the altar? On the heavenly altar, whose blood is that? It’s Jesus Christ. Of course it is.
And so similar to how the blood of bulls and oxen would have been used to consecrate priests for service here, the blood of Christ appears to be preemptively applied to Isaiah to consecrate him for the service of prophetic proclamation. And it’s got to be Christ’s blood because no one else’s blood goes on that altar. No heavenly bulls or goats being slaughtered. It’s all Christ.
So unclean lips and all, it’s not an act by which Isaiah is never able to sin again. That misses the whole point. This act means that from that point on, his fitness to be a minister of the Gospel, his worthiness is no longer based on what he’s going to do or his practice. It’s a declaration, unconditional, that he is fit for service regardless of what may come or what he may do. And it’s based on that other alien holiness you and I know comes through Jesus Christ.
It’s not rooted in this unclean world. It’s not rooted in a place that can be corrupted. It comes from beyond that. And so his guilt is taken away. Now it doesn’t—and it’s interesting because Isaiah does go on later in his prophecy, chapter 64, he says, “My righteousness is as filthy rags.” Okay? So even after this, he continues to sin. That doesn’t disqualify him from the need to declare the goodness of God.
And while we ought to be pursuing personal holiness in our lives, that is important. What we do today, what we did yesterday, and what we will do tomorrow doesn’t exempt us, if we believe in Christ, from fulfilling the service we’ve been given to share the Gospel and declare what God has done for us to a world around us who does not know.
Now, the sanctification of Isaiah would not be complete unless we got to verse 8. So in verse 8, you have Isaiah doing something amazing. Whereas just a moment prior he had given himself up for loss, now he responds in faithful boldness to apply himself to the work of God. And perhaps there’s no better picture of the beauty of faithfulness in the life of a believer than when we overcome our shame not on the basis of ignorance, but on the basis of, boy, I am so ashamed of these things in the presence of a holy God, in light of a holy God.
And yet I trust in his work on my behalf to make me fit as a minister for his glory. And so I am going to take a step forward in faith to do what he has asked me to do. Not because I have any right to, because of my own qualification, but because I know that that blood is holy Trinity trustworthy to make me qualified to take the next step.
And that’s where we’re going to end our study for this morning. It’d be good on a future Sunday to get through the rest of this chapter. But for today, I want to encourage us with the following insights. And I would really want you all to be bringing this to mind often because these will keep you from feeling indifferent to the sharing of the Gospel, and it’ll help to keep the excitement of that fresh.
Just two insights. We’ll keep this simple. One, God is worthy of our proclamation, right? He’s worthy of it. We see it all around us. We can’t hide from it. He is worthy of it. Number two, our qualification to tell of that worthiness to others is rooted in Christ and not in our own righteousness.
That means that if we believe in Christ, there will never be a point in our lives where we have somehow disqualified ourselves out of being declared worthy of telling of the goodness of Christ. Which means that if you struggle with your own sin and think, boy, I can’t do this. I’m too weak, I’m too sinful. Like, I do these things. You know what kind of person I am? Like, I can’t go share the gospel. I gotta fix all this stuff first. Wrong. You’re declared righteous. You believe in Christ, and that’s not gonna change.
So do please keep these things fresh in your mind, and please pray with me right now. We’re going to ask God to do just that for us in this year 2025.
God, thank you that you are not content to remain apart from us, and that though we had chosen very intentionally, Adam first, but we make the same choice so often in our lives to live a life apart from your goodness and the manifestation of your goodness that results. You pursue us and you bring goodness into this world that we may be reminded day after day after day that you intend good for us.
So we do pray that we would be reminded often of your worthiness, that we would be reminded often of our qualifications to proclaim that worthiness in Christ only. And we pray that you would cause fruit to come from our lives as we take those little steps of faith forward, trusting in Christ’s sacrifice and sufficiency and not in our own. We pray this in his perfect name. Amen.