I love this series called “The King and I” because God, our
King, is still actively working in this world. We do not serve a passive God.
We serve a God who heals. We serve a God who saves. We serve a God who delivers
according to His will. Amen? Amen. God is King. And in case you haven’t figured
it out yet, God is sovereign. God can do anything He pleases because He is the
King. And He is still actively working in this world.
One of the great comforts in my life is the knowledge that
God is the King of continuity. Now what do I mean by “God is the King of
continuity?” What that means is that God will never, ever contradict what He
has already declared or what He has already spoken. Because He is God, He will
never, ever contradict Himself. He will never go against something He has
already spoken. If it’s in His word, He has declared it; He will never, ever
contradict His word. He’s the King of continuity.
Now why does that give me such great comfort in my life? Two
reasons:
Many people say, “God doesn’t exist because I’ve never seen
Him.” I was listening to a radio show the other day, and they were saying
something similar. They were saying, “If God exists, why in the world would He
insert Himself into my particular circumstances?” They happened to be
complaining about a football player who prays regularly; who’s become national
news because he gives God all the glory and all the praise. I don’t even have
to mention his name. Most of you know who he is. So, this guy called radio
station criticizing, asking why would God insert Himself into this particular
person’s or player’s circumstance.
Well, the same holds true for you and me. Why would God
insert Himself into our particular circumstances? Out of all the problems in
the world, why would He insert Himself into my circumstance? That question is
the reason I’m so thrilled that God is the King of continuity, that He won’t
contradict His word. Because God said in Jeremiah 29:13 - and if you remember
nothing else this morning, remember this - “You will seek Me and find Me when
you search for Me with all your heart.” That’s a word from the Lord for
somebody. And I’ve got to ask the question: When was the last time you really
sought the Lord? I mean really sought the Lord? Sought an audience with the
King?
Isaiah found himself, in the sixth chapter of Isaiah, having
an audience with the King, and he hadn’t expected it. He had an audience with
God Almighty. What’s it like to have an audience with the King?
Let’s talk about that for a minute before we look at
Isaiah’s experience. What’s it like to have an audience with the King? Now
there are not a lot of kings in kingdoms in this earthly world today. But go
back a few years, and the earth was filled with kings and realms. Pick a king that
you would have loved to have met and picture yourself in that time. If you
can’t imagine a king, picture King Arthur. My wife loves Camelot. Pick a
fictional king, King Arthur and Gwyn. You would love to meet these two. You
would love to have an audience with the king. What’s that like?
Well, picture yourself living in a village and all of a
sudden one day the engraved invitation comes. You’ve been granted an audience
with the king. The invitation comes to your house, and you’re filled with
excitement, and the excitement grows when the carriage rolls up - a beautiful,
royal carriage, which parks right in front of your house. Then the doorman lets
you into the carriage, the door closes, and the carriage starts moving through
the village. And all your neighbors and friends are staring and pointing and
looking at you as you’re riding in the carriage. And you’re thinking, “That’s
right. I have an audience with the king. While all of you continue to labor in
the hot sun, I have an audience with the king.” That’s what you’d feel. You’d
feel excited.
Then you get to the royal palace, the footman assists you
out of the carriage, you walk up to the palace, and two men at the door open
these two-story tall, ornate doors for you. They open just for you, and you are
ushered into a grand lobby the size of this cathedral. There’s a chandelier
hanging in that lobby that’s as large as your living room. And you’re the only
one invited. You have an audience with the king. Then doors open to the great
hall, a massive hall with several-stories tall windows with the morning light
is streaming in. There’s a red carpet runner right down the length of this long
hall. And it’s all for you. You’re walking down this red carpet runner and
pretty soon you see the throne at the far end of the hall. There sits the king
and he’s waiting for you.
As you approach, a little bit of fear wells up. What in the
world do I say? What is he going to ask of me? Because in days of old, if you
had an audience with an earthly king, there were only a couple of reasons why.
Either the king had an assignment for you or he wanted something from you. The
king didn’t just automatically grant audiences to have a chitchat. That’s not
what kings did. That’s not what kings do. He would want something from you. And
he’d have an assignment for you, or he wanted something from you.
As you’re approaching the throne, you’re wondering, “What
could the assignment be?” This could be a life-changing, game-changing moment
in my life. What’s the assignment going to be?” So now you’re standing there
before the king with these things going through your mind. Keep that in your
mind a second as we look and see what happened to Isaiah in the sixth chapter.
As I read this starting in Isaiah 6, verse 1, you will
recognize the words because it’s a song we’ve sung often in this church. You
may not have realized that it was scripture when you were singing it, but its
words we sing often in this church:
“I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and
the train of His robe filled the temple with glory. Above it stood a seraphim
and one cried to the other and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The
whole earth is filled with His glory. And the posts of the door were shaken by
the voice of Him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. And so I
said, whoa is me, I am undone because 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 live
coal, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth
with it and said, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips. Your iniquity is taken
away, and your sin purged.’ Also, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom
shall I send, and whom shall go for us?’ Now you say who is us? Father, Son,
Holy Spirit. Whom shall go for us? ‘Then I,’ Isaiah, said. ‘Here am I, send
me.’”
God granted an audience to Isaiah, and then granted him two
things.
First, God cleansed him. That’s the first thing He did. As
Isaiah stood in the presence of the King, Isaiah immediately recognized, “I’m
not worthy. I’m unclean. My mouth has been unclean. My thoughts have been
unclean.” That’s immediately what Isaiah recognized.
And because Isaiah recognized his problem, recognized that
he was unworthy, immediately God took care of it and said, “I have purged your
sin from you.”
When you come before the presence of the King, is your
immediate reaction, “I’m not worthy. I’m unclean.” If that’s your reaction,
congratulations because your sin is removed. When you confess it to Jesus and
you say, “I’m not worthy, I’m unclean, I’ve done these things bad, I’ve had
these problems,” Jesus takes it away. Just like God took it away from Isaiah,
He purges it from you, as well.
Now the question is why are you walking around with all this
baggage? You may say, “It’s because I’m guilty of it. I’ve done this in my
life. I’ve done that in my life. But, wait a minute. I asked for forgiveness
for that last year, or yesterday. Why am I still carrying it around?”
Be assured, God will take away your baggage, and when He
does, He removes it as far as the east is from the west. So, take a deep breath
and put your luggage down. Stop carrying it. Stop carrying around your baggage
from yesterday. If you’ve given it to the Lord, put it down, or give it to the
Lord right now, and put it down. Right now as we speak, just put it down.
“Lord, I’m unworthy, I’ve done it wrong, forgive me.” It’s gone.
Where are the smiles? Come on, you just got rid of some
baggage. Some of you’ve been carrying around baggage for years! Now, take a
deep breath. Doesn’t that feel good? It’s wonderful not to carry around
baggage. You’ve been to the airport with heavy bags and it feels great when you
put them down. Walk out of here today rejoicing because you’ve put your baggage
down, you’ve laid it at the feet of Jesus because you were willing to say, “I’m
not worthy.” You were willing to say that, just as Isaiah said it.
The next thing God does is very exciting. God gives Isaiah
an assignment. God says, “Who will go for us?” God reached out, tapped him on
the shoulder, and said, “I have a job for you, My son. I have a job for you.”
Notice, God did not say, “My job for you is to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a
scientist, or a lawyer, or an astrophysicist.” That’s not what He said. God
said, “Who will go for us?” Meaning this: Are you willing to put your life in
God’s hands and let Him do what He wants to with it? That’s a scary thing to
do, until you do it, to surrender it all to God. Now God may turn around and
say, “I want you to be a prophet. I want you to be a teacher. I want you to be
a doctor. I want you to be a nuclear scientist.” But that’s God’s decision.
He’ll plant that dream in your heart. The question is: Are you willing to
surrender to surrender all to Him? That’s a scary thing to do and it’s a
question we all have to answer. What’s your answer when God says, “Who will go
for us?” It’s a question we all have to answer.
I had to answer it in my life. And I’ll tell you, it was not
an easy thing to do when I gave my life to Jesus when I was five years old. I
had grown up a Christian. I believed in the Bible, I believed in heaven, and I
believed in hell. When I found out that the Bible says, “The rain shall fall on
the just and the unjust alike,” I realized that there was a lot of rain in my
life. There was divorce in my family; my father had left, and by the time I hit
teenage years, I had a lot of anger built up. By the time I got to college, I
had a mission in life. I was going to drink as much as I could, get as good “A”
grades, as many as I possibly could because I wanted to make the most money
possible and make the rules in my home because I believed money was going to
solve my problems. Alcohol, money, and relationships were going to solve my
emptiness. That was my mission, so through four years of college, I lived that
way. Four years I was running from God because it wasn’t going to be me when
God would ask, “Who will go for us?” I felt God had forgotten about me, so I
didn’t have time for Him. That’s where I was.
And then a funny thing happened. I drove across from
Colorado where I grew up on my way to California. Eventually I got to the
deserts of Utah where those glorious canyons are. You’ve seen them in films;
they’re absolutely beautiful. And there was a sunset, a beautiful sunset, as I
was driving through these canyons. Then here comes the voice of the Lord. And
it wasn’t condemning, it wasn’t booming, it was very soft. God said to me,
“Where are you going and why are you hiding from Me?” That’s not what I wanted
to hear. That’s not what I wanted to hear from the Lord. “Where are you going
and why are you hiding from Me?” In reality, I knew my life wasn’t going
anywhere. Oh sure, I had a great degree from a great university. And I knew I
was going to get a good job. I had good career plans in the finance world; had
my bachelor’s degree in finance. I was going to California to make my mark. But
somehow when God spoke to me, I knew that my plans were just like the grains of
sand on a beach, so easily washed away by the tide. They didn’t mean anything
if they weren’t centered in God. They didn’t mean anything.
And then God said something very interesting: “I have a plan
for your life. Do you trust Me?” That happened about 30 miles further down the
road, after I was grappling with the first voice. “I have a plan for your
life,” just like He said to Jeremiah. God never contradicts His word, and He
will always speak His word to you. “I have a plan for your life,” God said to
me. “Do you trust Me?” I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure, and that was a tough thing
to admit.
I believed in heaven and hell, and here I am, the Creator of
the universe is talking to me, and my response is, “I’m not sure. I’m not
sure.” And I wrestled with that for a couple of months after I got to
California. And the reason I wrestled with it was this: Do I really trust God?
I grew up in the church. I grew up around Christians. They didn’t look any
different than the secular world. They talked about each other behind their backs,
they back-stabbed each other. It was horrible. It was like, if that’s the
social club, I’ll take my chances out here in the world. That was my experience
of growing up in several different churches.
And then I got here. It was very interesting. I sat right up
there, about five rows up in that balcony right over there, the west balcony.
First time ever I walked into the doors of this church, I sat right up there in
1987. And I heard the Lord say through His servant Robert Schuller, something
profound, something that I’ll never forget: “The church is the only institution
that’s doing everything it can to get bad people and hurt people and lost
people and lonely people to join. Never forget that the church is a hospital
for sinners and not a museum for saints.” That changed my outlook forever.
Changed me forever. Changed me forever because my response to that was, “God,
You do care. You do care about the hurting and the lost that are out there.
It’s not just a social club. It’s a hospital. That’s what a church is.”
I can stand before you today and say I have no idea what
tomorrow holds for my life, for this church. I have no idea what His plans are,
but I know whom I trust. I know whom I trust. God is still on the throne, and
the train of His robe still fills this temple with glory. Amen? Amen.
So God is saying to you, “Who will go for us?” Father, Son
and Spirit are asking you, “Who will go for us?” See, God has a plan for your
life in 2012. You may not have realized it yet, but God has a plan for your tomorrow.
He has a plan for your tomorrow. He has new career plans for you. He has new
relationship plans for you. He has a new vision for your life.
Somebody needs to put on his or her faith glasses. You need
a new prescription for your glasses and it’s called faith. Put those faith
glasses on. The prescription is Isaiah 6 where God says, “Whom shall I send,
and whom will go for us?” God’s speaking to you. That word is active and alive
today. I don’t care where you are or where you’ve come from, what your background
looks like. God is speaking to you this morning. He’s saying, “Who will go for
us?” “Who will go for us?” “Who will go for us?”
It’s like that game, Tag. It’s like God just reached out and
said, “Tag, you’re it.”
Remember when you were a kid? Anybody play tag? Raise your
hand if you played tag. You all played tag, running around trying to dodge and
weave, saying, “Get away from me!”
And all of a sudden a person catches you and says, “Tag,
you’re it!” Right?
You’ve spent your whole life doing this to God. Oh, I don’t
want that, right? You spent your whole life doing that. Guess what - this
morning, God is here. He’s in the house. The Holy Spirit is here, and He just
reached out and said, “Tag, you’re it. You stopped long enough for Me to grab a
hold of you. Tag, you’re it. You’re it.”
And you think, but what about all the problems in the world?
God just reached out and said, “Tag, you’re it,” just like He said to Moses. He
said to Moses: “I have heard the cries of My people and you’re my solution.
Tag, you’re it.”
God maybe have broken your heart for the lost and the
hurting in this world, and He says, “I’m going to make you a teacher. I’m going
to make you a nurse. I’m going to make you an aid worker,” because it breaks
your heart. And it breaks your heart because God allowed it to break your
heart. And He’s saying to you, just like He said to Moses, “I have heard the
cries of My people, you’re my solution. Tag, you’re it.”
Or! Or! Maybe you feel like you’re supposed to be in
leadership. That’s because God reached out and said, “Tag, you’re it,” just
like He took Saul, who was a killer of Christians. And He reached out and He
said, “Tag, you’re it. I’m going to make you a leader of the new church.” Maybe
God has given you a heart for leadership for a reason because He’s reaching out
and saying, “Tag, you’re it.”
Anybody like to play tag? Oh come on, God just reached out
and grabbed you today. Something amazing is going to happen to you in the New
Year. Something phenomenal. Something astounding. Give God the glory for what
He’s going to do in your life, because it’s going to be amazing. It’s going to
be amazing. Amazing.
In Exodus 33, Moses prayed a bold prayer. Now if you
realized it, but in Exodus 33, Moses prayed a bold prayer that every one of you
needs to be praying as a Christian. If you’ve accepted Christ into your life,
you need to be praying this prayer. You need to be praying the bold prayer of
Moses. What was that?
Moses is with the Lord. And the Lord promises to Moses that
His presence is going to go with Moses and the children of Israel as they go
into the Promised Land. That’s the promise God made. And then Moses prayed a
bold prayer. God’s presence wasn’t enough. Moses says, “Please God, show me
Your glory.” “Show me Your glory.” The presence wasn’t enough. Somebody here needs
that. You need to see God’s glory.
I don’t know how to explain it but when His glory comes upon
you, the earth shakes. Your life will never be the same. You will hear God
speaking. Two weeks ago Ken Ulmer was here. He talked about hearing and knowing
the voice of God. When God’s glory comes upon you, you will hear and know the
power and the voice of God. You won’t ever have to wonder again. It’s a
powerful thing.
So if you want to hear God’s voice, if you want God’s glory
in your life, stand up. Because God’s going to do this and it’s going to be
different for everybody, but God will reveal His glory to you, if you ask for
it. You have to ask for it. You have to say, “Please, God, show me Your glory.”
This might be a scary thing for you. It might be a scary thing to let God just
come in and take over your house, right here, completely take it over. I know
you’ve accepted Jesus. But you crave something more. You crave His presence all
over your life. If that’s where you’re at this morning, just close your eyes
and pray this prayer: “Please, God, show me Your glory. Rain down on me. Take
over. Show me Your glory.
Oh Lord Jesus, I ask Your anointing to pass through this
house. Completely pass through this house. Touch every life, touch every lip of
every person who has said, “Lord God, please show me Your glory.” Touch every
one. I can feel Your spirit move. People are going to walk out of here with a
new perspective of You. With a new heart for You. They’re going to hear Your
voice and they’re going to know that You are God. Holy Spirit, come now. Now.
In the name of Jesus, come now. Amen, and amen. Amen. Hallelujah. Give God the
glory. Give God the glory. Amen.
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