God Cleanses Those He Calls

Isaiah 6:1-8

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne;
and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
    the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

God Cleanses Those He Calls

Have you ever heard of “seraphim”? If you haven’t, I wouldn’t be all that surprised), because that word “seraphim” only occurs twice in the entire Bible, and both are in the passage that we read earlier today from Isaiah 6.

Seraphim are pretty amazing creatures. They’re a classification of angel, i.e. a holy, heavenly being created by God to do his bidding.  They have six wings.

With two they cover their faces, with two they cover their feet and with two they fly.[1]

Isaiah also tells us how they behave. He starts by saying that they are stationed in the throne room of God, and that they stand at the ready to do God’s will. Better than standing, actually, they’re flying above his throne, and if you’ve ever tried to get from here to Toronto, you know that it’s a lot faster to fly than to walk. These angels, the seraphim, are ready at a moment’s notice to do what God wants them to do quickly.

More than that, Isaiah also tells us that the seraphim are singers. While they’re flying above the throne waiting for God to give them orders, they call to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”[2]

Seraphim are pretty amazing creatures, and you have to imagine that if God wanted to get anything done, sending one of his seraphim would be a great place to start.

The thing is, God does want something to get done. He wants everyone who calls on the name of the Lord to be saved.[3] But, as Paul pointed out in Romans 10, the only way for someone to call on the name of the Lord is if they believe in him, and the only way they can believe in him is if they’ve heard about him, and the only way for them to hear about him is if someone tells them about him.[4]

Sounds like a job for the seraphim, doesn’t it? There’s a whole host of them on standby in the throne room of God. God could commission them with the snap of his fingers. With wings like theirs they could fly to every corner of the globe in the blink of an eye. They’re already very practiced at proclaiming the name of our God. And don’t you think that if a seraph appeared to you, you’d listen? I know I would!

But even with a room full of seraphim at his disposal, God still asks the question,

“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”[5]

God has these amazing ministering spirits at his beck and call, who live to serve, and he calls you. Are you ready to do what not even the angels do?

Isaiah wasn’t. Not at first.

When Isaiah first saw God, he was terrified. “Woe to me!” he cried. “I am ruined!”[6]

Isaiah almost certainly knew about Moses’ experience about 700 years earlier. When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God replied,

“You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”[7]

It’s passages like this one that inspired that famous face-melting scene from Indiana Jones when the Nazis opened the ark of the covenant and they all died. God himself said that we are not worthy to see him in all his glory and that if we ever did, this side of heaven, we would die.

That’s scary! I can understand that kind of fear. Indiana Jones gave me nightmares as a kid.

But I’m not quite convinced that in that moment Isaiah would have been able to think of anything else, much less one line that God said to Moses 700 years earlier. I’m not convinced that Isaiah would have been able to think of anything but the raw holiness and glory of God sitting in front of him. And as much as I’m sure that that glory is incredibly beautiful, I’m also sure that it’s incredibly humbling.

In fact, that’s what “holy” means. It means that you’re set apart, head and shoulders above everyone and everything else. It means that you are untouched by the guilt and shame of sin. It means that you are pure and perfect in every way. And for Isaiah to stand in the raw glory and holiness of God, it only served to highlight how unlike God he was – how inglorious and unholy Isaiah was.

You’ve been in those situations, haven’t you? You feel pretty good about how well you ice skate, until you step foot in a rink with world-class athletes (or, as an American, you go skating at Rotary Park with a bunch of Canadians). Then you feel pretty silly. You feel well-informed about a topic, until you enter a conversation with people who know much more than you. Then you feel ignorant and silly.

Imagine those feelings, then multiply them by 1,000, and you might begin to approach how Isaiah felt standing before the raw glory and holiness of God. He was unworthy to stand there. He was unworthy even to look at God. The seraphim in all their glory and majesty were not worthy to show their faces or feet in God’s presence. Who was Isaiah even to stand before God? He was unworthy.

Isaiah admitted it,

“I am a man of unclean lips.”[8]

Hearing the perfect praise of those awesome angels about our holy God, only made Isaiah think about all the ways he had used his lips for something less holy. Maybe it was gossip or lies about his neighbour. Maybe it was an angry outburst at a family member, or a faltering, bumbling attempt at talking about God with a friend. Whatever it was, we’re not told, but it made Isaiah feel (and know that he was) unworthy even to stand in God’s presence.

So what did God do? He met Isaiah where Isaiah felt weakest. God sent one of those seraphim to cleanse him in precisely the place where Isaiah felt the most guilt and shame. He took a coal from the altar of God and touched Isaiah’s unclean lips and said,

“Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”[9]

God applied the soothing salve of his saving Gospel to the part of Isaiah’s life where he felt most sinful. God cleansed Isaiah of his sin and then sent him – not any of the seraphim – God sent the forgiven sinner to go and proclaim forgiveness to sinners.

God does the same for you.

If you were to stand before the throne of our holy, holy, holy God what part of your life would feel most sinful? What unholiness of yours would stand out like a sore thumb next to the raw glory and holiness of God?

Would it be your lips? Would you suddenly remember the hasty and uncharitable words you spoke out of anger to a family member or friend? Would it be your eyes, as you think back on the unholy images you allowed your eyes to linger on or search for? Would it be your hands, as you think about the work you left undone, or the way you used them solely for your own benefit with no regard for service to God or the benefit of your neighbour?

When you think about standing before the throne of our holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty, are you plagued with guilt and regret for the sins of your past? Do you feel unworthy? Well, join the club.

We’re all worthy. None of us are holy. We’re all sinners. But God has come to you in his Word and called you, and, as he shows us here with Isaiah, God cleanses those he calls.

You are not worthy to stand before God, but that’s why God sent his Son to come to you – as a man, born of a woman, doomed to die on a cross 2,000 years ago, but again and now through the Word that you hear in worship today, through his sacraments that you can receive personally and intimately, thankfully and often. You are not worthy to stand before God, but that’s why God sent his Son to come to you.

God may not send a seraph to take a coal from the altar of God and touch you where you feel most sinful, but God does still apply the soothing salve of his saving Gospel in ways that are just as intimate and just as personal. He poured water over your head when you were baptized and promised that he has washed your sins away, through the perfect, innocent death, and glorious resurrection of his Son. He invites you to take and eat, to take and drink his own body and blood which Jesus has given and poured out for you on the cross for the forgiveness of all your sins.

You are not worthy to stand before him. You were certainly not qualified to be his spokesperson on earth, but that’s why he cleansed you through his Gospel, and through that cleansing, that’s also why he commissions you to go for him.

Think about that. That’s something that not even the seraphim, the holy host of heaven, are qualified to do. Because of what God has done for you in Christ, you are more qualified than the angels to take the good news of salvation to the world. Who better to announce forgiveness to sinners than sinners whose guilt has been taken away and whose sin has been atoned for? You are perfectly qualified to represent God, not because of who you are or what you can do, but because God has called you by his Gospel and cleansed you through the saving work of Christ his Son.

God had all those six-winged, singing seraphim to send, but he called Isaiah to go. God still has countless legions of angels, but he calls you today. Will you answer as Isaiah did? He didn’t know what God had in store for him. He had no earthly idea how difficult the challenge would be. But that didn’t cause him to pause for a second. Whatever God called him to do, wherever God would send him, Isaiah was ready to serve his Lord. “Here am I.” Don’t send your seraphim. Don’t send anyone else. “Send me!”

You are unworthy. You were unqualified. But God sent his Son to you and for you. He cleansed you from your sin through his death on a cross. He calls you to serve him by going with his Gospel to the world. Whom else shall he send? Who else will go for him? God give you the strength to say, “Here am I. Send me!” Amen.

[1] Isaiah 6:2

[2] Isaiah 6:3

[3] Romans 10:13

[4] Romans 10:14

[5] Isaiah 6:8

[6] Isaiah 6:5

[7] Exodus 33:20

[8] Ibid

[9] Isaiah 6:7

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Baptism Is a Big Deal

Titus 3:4-7

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

Baptism Is a Big Deal

Baptism is a pretty big deal around here. You literally have to walk around a 3,000lb baptismal font just to get in the door. Today is Baptism Sunday; it’s the day that we remember Jesus’ baptism and celebrate our own. We baptized 2 children this morning and invited 20 people to put a stone with their name on it at the base of our baptismal font.

Baptism is a pretty big deal around here, but not because of the traditions we’ve developed or the architecture we’ve designed. Baptism is a big deal because of the 3 words that the Apostle Paul wrote to his friend Titus. Writing about specifically about baptism, Paul says, “He saved us.”  

They’re just three words, but they mean so much. They’re just three words, but they prompt me to ask six questions: who, what, whom, why, how, and so what? Let’s take them one at a time.

He saved us. Who saved us? Well, God, of course. But Paul gets more specific than that. He calls him God our Saviour. He refers to the role of the Holy Spirit, who by the way, was given to you by the Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Who saved us? Father, Son and Holy Spirit – all three persons of the Triune God at work for one purpose – to save you. It’s the same Triune God whose name we’ve heard half a dozen times already today. We began our worship in his name. We recalled Jesus’ Great Commission to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and we fulfilled it, twice today. We hear that name at the end of our prayers and in the blessing that will close our service today.

The Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – is all around us, united in one purpose and one action. What is it?

Paul tells us: He saved us.  

I’m not going to spend too much time on this right now, because we’ll talk about it more later, but “save” a strong word. It conjures up images of firefighters and lifeguard, police officers rescue people from car accidents, drowning, burning buildings.

Salvation is about rescue and deliverance. Salvation implies the presence of danger – that there’s a serious, often life-threatening problem.

That’s what our Triune God does. He saves, i.e. rescues, delivers from danger, from a life-threatening problem. But he’s not out there saving some damsel in distress. Paul tells us whom he is saving too: He saved us.

That’s a strong word too. In other parts of the Bible, we hear Jesus say, “God so loved the world.” In other letters that Paul wrote he makes it clear that believers are the ones who can count on God’s rescue. But here Paul puts a finer point on it. He says, “God saved us.”

God saved you personally. He saved me individually. We are not lost in the countless billions of believers who have ever been born. We are not some nameless, faceless number in a vast sea of souls who have ever seen the light of day. No, God knows you personally, and he has saved you personally.

Who? What? Whom? You can’t get a whole lot simpler than that in a 3-word sentence. God saved you.

But now for the meatier questions, the more meaningful and specific ones.

I said before that “save” implies danger, i.e. serious, often life-threatening problems. You were in danger. Maybe not in danger of drowning, decapitation or dismemberment. No, you were in danger of something far worse – damnation.

We don’t often like to talk about it. We don’t even like to think about it. We often deceive ourselves into believing our own illusion of innocence. Take my son, for instance.

My baby is going to turn a year old later this month. There are days that his mother and I look at him and see the cutest, most precious, perfect child. It’s embarrassing, really, how much we love him, how much we think of him.

You can’t possibly tell me that that cute, precious, perfect baby is in danger of damnation, that God would ever send a child like that to hell! I mean, it puts a lump in my throat even to say it out loud.

But then you’ve got those days when he doesn’t stop whining from the time he wakes up at 5:00am until he begrudgingly falls asleep at 9:00pm. You see how incredibly skilled he is at identifying the one thing he’s not supposed to have or do, and despite all our best efforts, he finds a way to do it. He’s certainly capable of love and kindness – I’m confident of that; I’ve seen it – but he’s also more than capable of selfishness and greed and envy, of anger and disobedience and even spite.

Of course, that’s my child. Everything he is and does comes from me and his mother. For better or worse he is a product of who we are, and I know that I’m more than capable of selfishness, greed and envy, anger, disobedience and spite – and a whole lot more than that. I know where he gets it. He gets it from me, just like we got it from our parents, and they got it from theirs.

In the church we call it our sinful nature. It’s literally the condition of our hearts at birth. We inherit it like anything else – eye colour, hair colour, height, weight, sense of humour. So that even if you try really hard to be a good person and to do good things all your life, you’re fighting against your own nature, which, if you’re honest, you haven’t always been able to resist.

We can create this illusion of innocence – about our children, about ourselves – but that’s even more dangerous than the sins we commit, because it ignores the need for salvation.

That’s what God did. He saved us. There was a real problem, a deadly danger. God saved us from ourselves, from our sins, from the condition of our hearts since birth that would have damned us to hell forever, had it not been for kindness and love, his mercy and grace.

That’s the real answer to the question, “Why?” Why did God save us? Because we needed to be saved, sure, but much more than that, because he loves us – and not because we’re so lovable; it’s just the character of our Creator. Paul uses 4 words to describe him here: kindness and love, mercy and grace. Every one of those words describes God’s undeserved, his unconditional love for you.

God isn’t stuck with us. God doesn’t owe us anything. We’re not nearly as cute as we like to imagine ourselves, or so irresistible that he just can’t help but love us. We’re the exact opposite. We’ve done everything to disqualify ourselves from his love. We’ve been selfish, greedy, envious; we’ve been angry, disobedient, spiteful.

But he has been merciful and gracious, and the miracle of his mercy is that he loves us even though we are unlovable, even though we’ve done everything to push him away. He loves us enough to save us, even though we weren’t worth saving. That’s what makes it grace. That’s what makes him our Saviour. Salvation is a gift he gives us purely out of the goodness of his own heart, just because he wants to.

And this is the point that I really want you to take home today. Jesus said, “God so loves the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God makes this grand, universal promise of salvation through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for everyone who believes. But he applies it to you personally, individually. How? Through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. By baptism!

Baptism is the way that you can know that everything God promises to the world, he gives to you personally. Baptism is the way that God applies the salvation that Jesus accomplished for the world on a cross 2,000 years ago to you on a specific date in time that you can write down on a baptismal certificate or we can etch in stone for you to see and remember every time you walk in these doors.

Baptism is the way God adopts you into his family by his name on you – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – so that you can have the confidence of knowing that are God’s own child, and, more than that, that you are heir of heaven having the hope of eternal life in his name.

That’s our last question for today: So what? For what purpose did God save you?

So that you can hope – and not some vague sense of optimism or wishful thinking about the future. No, when God talks about hope, it’s a certain confidence. In baptism, God gives you the certain confidence that eternal life is yours.

Of course, when we hear about eternal life, we often fast forward to the end, to life in heaven. But that’s the beauty of baptism. In baptism God starts your eternal stopwatch.

I was baptized 34 years ago. I’ve committed a lot of sins since then (I’ve committed a lot of sins in the last 3-4 days). But because of my baptism, I don’t have to despair or fear that my salvation is in jeopardy. God saved me. Those baptismal waters still cover me in God’s grace and mercy. There is no sin I could commit so grievous that God’s grace cannot or has not forgiven. So, when I’m plagued by guilt and regret for the sins that I committed ages ago, or the ones more recent, I can look at the baptismal certificate I keep on my desk and I can thank that on the third day of May in 1987, my God applied my Saviour’s salvation to me personally and eternally.

You can do that too! Dig out your baptismal certificate from the file cabinet it’s been hiding in for years. Put it somewhere you’ll see it every day. Don’t have one? That’s ok! There are many ways to remember what God did for you when you were baptized.

Luther was a big proponent for making the sign of the cross on yourself every morning when you pray, because as you heard me say earlier today, when you were baptized the pastor said this to you: “Receive the sign of the cross on your head and on your heart to mark you as a redeemed child of Christ.” Making the sign of the cross isn’t some slavish way to pray according to the rules. It’s a reminder of what God did for you the day you were baptized.

God saved you because he loves you and because he wants you to live in his grace all the days of your life and into the eternal life you will share with him as heirs of heaven, God’s own dear children. And one of the ways he makes that yours is in baptism – the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. May he strengthen you to live in your baptismal grace all the days of your life. Peace be with you. Amen.

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