Matlock | 19/07/26 | Isaiah 6 - Being Displaced By God | Dave Watmore

Matlock 

Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/354059/episodes/19514482-matlock-19-07-26-isaiah-6-being-displaced-by-god-dave-watmore.mp3

Dave spoke from Isaiah 6 about how we need to be displaced by God. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Church in the Peak podcast. We hope you enjoy this message. For more information, visit churchinthepeak.org or come and join us at ten AM every Sunday. And that morning, uh Matt Ishuwood, uh who was leading worship, said brought the passage or part of the passage from Isaiah 6, and I thought that confirms that I've got to speak on that today. So I hope faith is slightly risen now that there is an expectation that God is going to speak to us. Let me first of all, because I know we have a number of people who are new Christians or or don't know Jesus or don't know the Bible very well. So let me just explain, do a little bit of teaching about the Bible. If you want to uh find various books, let me try and explain. The Bible is made up of of two parts. Two-thirds of it is the Old Testament, one third uh one, two-thirds is is Old Testament, one-third is the New Testament. Uh if you want to find the book of Isaiah, what you do is you open up the Bible, and in the middle you will probably find, if it's the same as mine, uh Psalms. Before Psalms, you have all the history books of the Jewish people. So you have things like Genesis and Rose. There are stories of the history of the Jewish people. Then in the middle you have Psalms, you have Song of Songs, you have Lamentations and Proverbs. They're the four in the middle. And then after that, in the Old Testament, you have the four major prophets. So Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel. And then you have many minor prophets. So if you want to find that, that's how you find it. Go to the middle, and then towards the New Testament, you will find Isaiah. Now, Isaiah, who was Isaiah? Who is this fellow? Well, he lived around about 700 years before Jesus. And yet what he said was like the gospel. I uh I was always taught that Isaiah is the gospel in the Old Testament because it is all about pointing towards Jesus. And I can go into a little bit more on that, but I don't think I've really got time for that. But let's uh let's uh try and understand who Isaiah was. Isaiah by um tradition was a uh well, he was born into a high level of the royal family. He was probably the unc probably a nephew of the king. And uh he was he was, if you like, one of the elites. He had a very good grasp of language, he was very well educated. And I'm saying this all so that it makes some sense when I read what we are going to say. Because let's read the net the passage I'm going to go from. This is Isaiah 6. 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. And above him were seraphim, each with six wings, with two wings that covered their faces, and two that covered their feet, and with two they were flying, and they were calling to one another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory. And at the sound of their voices the doorposts and the thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke. 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. Then one of the seraphim flew on to me with a live coal on his hand, which he had taken with tongues from the altar, and with it he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, Here I am, send me. He said, Go and tell the people this be ever hearing but never understanding, be ever seeing but never perceiving. Make the heart of the people calloused, and make their ears dull and close their eyes, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Then I said, For how long, Lord? And he said, Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted, and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away, and the land is utterly forsaken, and though a tenth remains in the land, it will be a wasteland. But as the Terebith and the oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land. Could you just uh Moira, could you just go back to the first verse, please? Just leave it up there and for a while. So who was this guy, King Uzziah? King Uzziah was a king who had reigned for fifty years. Now, kings we think, you know, we think like our queen, you know, she was on the throne for whatever it was, 60 odd years. She had a certain authority, but she didn't have power. When we're talking about the king Uzziah, he was he was probably more like a president. And he ruled over Israel for 50 years. So that was a long time. But after 35 years, uh he he did a rather stupid thing because God had said, Uzziah, you are a good king. And then he decided that he would take the place of the priests in the temple, and that he could he could speak to the Lord directly. And this is Old Testament stuff, and this is not good because it is not the he was not deemed to be holy in that way, and so he had leprosy for 15 years until he died. So we have this sense of King Uzziah was a good man and he ruled over the whole of the land, but in the last 15 years things started to drain away, his authority was gone because he was cut off and away. So when Isaiah says in the year that King Uzziah died, he's talking about something really um momental, momentous. It's like 9-11. Those of us, I think most people, maybe one person wasn't born, but most people were born that year, 2001, and we remember that. We would probably also say now the pandemic, wouldn't we? Something that was very, very changed people's thoughts. This is that sort of moment, and that is what Isaiah is leading us to to say, this is a very special time. The people of that land were losing hope. He was losing hope, and he was just uh he knew of God, but he didn't really know much more because he had been relying on the leadership of King Uzziah. Suddenly he was gone. What was going to happen to the people of Israel after his death? It says further down, well, it it we then have the fact that Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up. He has a vision of God. This is an amazing thing. And the glory of God comes down. Now I don't know, I'm not a uh Hebrew scholar, but uh I did some preparation for this. And I understand that the word glory means weight. I don't mean let's wait and cue for the bus. I mean heaviness. And that is what happened. The weight, the glory of God came down into that temple, into that room. And what do we see? We see an earthquake. Things shook, the doors shook. It was something you couldn't miss. It was a very important experience that they had. What I want to I'm gonna try and do this and see if this works, but what's your expectation of God? How do you see him? When Isaiah went into the temple, he'd probably been in many times before, dozens of times. But he didn't expect to meet God. When you come to church, do you expect to meet with God? I'm looking around, there's no nodding, no shaking. I do. I expect to meet with Jesus. But before I became a Christian, I was I was like this feather. Can you see it? Just about, it's a tiny little downy feather. And I'm gonna try and drop this into this water. I missed. I'll put it in the water. Here's one I didn't prepare earlier. What effect has that had on the water? Absolutely nothing. Maybe it, I mean, if you were a scientist, you say, yes, well, the weight of that has just about displaced the weight of that feather, but it's imperceptible. You see, if you are, we live in a culture that is supposedly Christian, and what people think is I have Christian culture, but they haven't allowed the weight of his glory to change them. I was like that before I met Jesus. I lived in a I didn't believe in God, as I've said many times, but I believed in the culture of Christianity. So that was quite good. But it made no difference to my life. No difference whatsoever. If I wanted to lie, I could. If I wanted to swear, I did. I was, as it says in that scripture, a man of unclean lips. And I lived amongst people of unclean lips. I won't be here next week. I should be playing golf at the Belfry. Uh I will be with about uh 14 or 15 other men playing golf on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I will be amongst the people of unclean lips. I go to the pub to watch the football. I am I am surrounded by people of unclean lips. But my lips were certainly not clean before I became a Christian. Now you may be, so that's me. That was me before I was born again. It may be that you go, yeah, I believe there was a God. There is a God, I believe there is Jesus. Here is that feather, a different one. See if this one will fall in the water. It's too big. Not much difference. There is a knowledge, but it hasn't changed my life that much simply by having some head knowledge of God. What happened to Isaiah was that he had uh an amazing encounter with God. He thought, he knew that there was a God, he acknowledged that there was a God, but when the when he saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the train of his glory filling the temple, he was changed. The glory of God came on him. Like this. It changed him. It changed him, it displaced him and allowed God to come in. When I as I say, when I was not a Christian, I my favorite expletive was Jesus Christ. The moment I was born again and had that encounter with him, I stopped. I've not sworn since. That's not a brag, it's just a fact. Why? Because I had seen the glory of God. I had an encounter that meant I knew he could change me, and that was my prayer on that uh January the 20th afternoon. Lord, I've done my best, but I want you to do better than I can do. Come in and have every cell of my being and help me. I stopped swearing, I stopped lying, I stopped drinking so much, I stopped lots of things, but I did more things. I loved people more. I was I was healed of the pain of losing my mother, of unemployment and rejection. Why? Not because I'd thought this is a great concept. I think the concept of Christianity is fantastic. It's going to change me. No, concept is like a feather. It just floats on the surface. We need an encounter. We need an encounter to change each one of us. Now I've had a number of encounters. It's not a one-off either. It's not a salvation-only issue. I I can remember a time when I was driving my car, I'd probably been a Christian about a year or so. I was driving up the motorway, and I felt uh the wind on my face. I had all my windows closed. I didn't have air conditioning, it was closed that long ago. And I pulled over and I thought, I I said, God, are you speaking to me? You are there's something that is blowing on my face. I could feel my hair, I had some hair then, uh being blown. And I pulled over, found a lay by, and I just waited for God. And I started to shake. I started to quake. And the car started to quake. And God said, I will send you out into the streets with to speak the gospel with joy. Now I remember that. I can still sit my see myself sitting in that car thinking, what are people going to think about my car shaking? Because it really was. It was what are they going to think is going on? It doesn't really matter. When you encounter Jesus, it doesn't matter. What is matter is Him and what He says about you. And He had told me what would happen, and He told me that He loved me. I also had an encounter when I was healed. I was thrown across the room, but my asthma was healed. There are many encounters I have had, but they're not just as a kind of mark on the bedpost, as you might say. No, these are things that change you. When the glory of God comes down, He will change you. He will push out the rubbish of who you are and replace it with the wonderful gifts of who He is, the characteristics of who He is. But it does need one thing. Where it says there, uh Isaiah said, I am a man of unclean lips, and I live amongst the people of unclean lips. That was his repentance. He is saying, I am undone, I am not worthy to be in your presence. But then this weird angels came and took the coal and put it on his lips and said, Your sin is atoned for. It is paid. It is paid in full. And you are free now to hear what I want to do with you. And I haven't got time to go into the the next part. But he is told he will go and speak to the people of Israel. And they will be never, they will always hear but never understand. And then you see in the 700 years later, Jesus uses the same expression. He quotes Isaiah to say, This is what is happening. And you think, this is all doomed, this is terrible. And then he goes to the cross. That is where we are finally atoned for. Finally, the price is paid for our sin. And so that we can have a number of intimate encounters with the Holy Spirit. Because He is poured out as we heard some other people speak. So I think that's pretty well all I want to say for the moment. That there is repentance needs to be done and an expectation that Jesus will come and meet you and change you. I have had times where I know that I have done things wrong and I need to say sorry. And I start with saying sorry to Jesus. But he comes to me, he brings comfort. If you feel, oh do you know what? I cannot possibly go into the presence of God. My self-esteem is so low that if I go into the presence of God, I will just dissolve in tears. You might dissolve in tears. Yes, your self-esteem in yourself will not help you. But when you have seen that the Lord loves you, you will be changed. And your sense of inferiority will be gone. It will evaporate. Why? Because he has told you that he loves you. And he loves you so much that he's gone to the cross for you. Could the band just come back, please? So I want so the band are gonna play um a song. Matt and I uh God put it in in our hearts, both the same song. And I want you to be ready to encounter God. To come forward, if you want to know Jesus more, if you have been like my I can't even find it now. It's gone. My little feather, it's gone. Oh, here it is. If you felt like that, worthless, small, nothing, he can change you. He can change you into the person that he has always uh designed and expected you to be. So I would encourage you, make that deal with God. Say, yes, I am a sinner. I have done many things wrong, and I live amongst people who are also doing terrible things. But in the end, the fact that you have come to him and been changed means that the world will be changed that little bit more, because that is what he will do. He will send you out to bring the good news of Jesus to the people around you. So shall we just start? Yeah, Father. Come, Lord. Come and touch us, Lord. Come and fill us with your presence, Lord God. We want to meet with you, Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.