Thursday, February 11, 2016

Isaiah 6: The Eager Prophet

Isaiah receives his divine commissioning as a prophet in chapter 6.  It's informative to compare his calling to a couple of other servants of God in the Bible.

Isaiah has a vision of the Lord in the Temple.  (Whether Isaiah himself was in the Temple when he had this vision, or had a vision of "the Lord in the Temple" is unclear.)  As is typical of encounters with God, the prophet describes not the Almighty Himself, but what is around Him: the train of His robe, the ministering angels, etc.  We are given a date as to when this happened - the year that King Uzziah died, making it around 740 BC.  Isaiah's first response to this vision is a feeling of unworthiness, being made aware of his sin by a glimpse of the Lord's holiness.  An attending seraph flies with a live coal taken from the altar and touches Isaiah's mouth with it, cleansing him.  Only then can Isaiah hear the voice of the Lord, who asks who shall be sent on His behalf.  Isaiah eagerly volunteers for the assignment: "Here I am, send me!" (vs. 8)

This was not experience of Moses about 700 or so years earlier.  Then, an encounter with the Lord at the burning bush on Mount Sinai had revealed Moses to be a reluctant leader.  He tried to beg off the job, asking the Lord to find someone else.  But God's mind was set on Moses.  And Moses, along with Aaron, successfully delivered the children of Israel from their bondage with the Lord's help.

If Moses was a reluctant prophet, Jonah was a rebellious one.  When Jonah received the call to go preach to the city of Nineveh, he took off in the opposite direction.  God had to send a storm and a whale to get Jonah back on track.  Still, when Jonah finally obeyed, he met with remarkable success in his ministry as the whole city repented and was forgiven.  Yet Jonah sulked, unsatisfied with the positive results, preferring instead to see God's judgment rain down on Israel's enemies.

Despite Isaiah's earnest willingness to serve the Lord as His messenger, he would not meet with the success of either Moses or Jonah.  Isaiah's ministry was to be one of failure.  In an exceptionally hard saying of scripture, the Lord explains Isaiah's mission in verses 9 and 10: "Go and say to this people: 'Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.'  Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed."  (Centuries later, this scripture would be applied to Jesus and His predilection for using parables.)

Why would God call an eager prophet to a ministry of futility?  An even more disheartening question: why would God will for His people to be blind, deaf, and stupid instead of repentant and healed?  One possible answer is that what we are hearing in these verses is not God's preference, but His frustration.  He understands how this is going to go.  He knows that His people will continue rejecting Him.  He is not surprised by the judgment that will be coming upon them.  And yet, in His mercy and in His justice, He knows that they must receive a warning.  Though they are sure to be disregarded and ignored, Isaiah's words testify to the purpose and plan of God that will be visited upon His people.

And the fruits of Isaiah's ministry, though rejected by his own generation, have been loved and appreciated through the ages by God's people ever since.  Isaiah has a word for us today, just as much as he did to his peers.  And we are not fated to be blind, deaf and uncomprehending toward it.  We have access to God's grace through Jesus Christ to turn and be healed!  I would be eager, too, to deliver a message like that!

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