Pastor Ralph Douglas West - Commissioned To Do A Mission - Isaiah 6:1-8

0:00 While you're standing, allow me to thank so many of you for your participation and your contribution of volunteer service. Last week we had over 1,050 people from around the country on our campus, pastors and church leaders. Many of you helped in some way. I want to thank you for that. All right? You may be seated. I wanted to seat you before I presented a few people so that they didn't get lost in the standing. We have one wall that had been set aside last week where we knew people would stop and take pictures. It was a balloon wall with IC3 on it.

0:59 So we knew everybody would want that wall. but that wall lost to another wall that had been put up. In fact, lines of people, and I pray, I pray, I've seen this so often in churches and in our church, don't let other people be more excited about what you do than what you are excited. Don't do that.

1:25 And so I want to present to you a few people. You've seen them, but you need to know what they did and the role that they played in the 1619 project, the 1619 wall mural. And so to reserve American history, which is African American history, when there are some people, for whatever reason, that's trying to erase a particular period of history, it's a scar, it's ugly. But that's why we look back on it. Because in the words of George Santa Anna, the Harvard philosopher and mathematician and scholar, if you fail to remember your past, you're damned to repeat it.

2:19 And so here are a few people. I want you to celebrate. It's four names. Let me give you the four names and then we can appreciate them. One is Sheila Murray. I think Sheila's in the choir stand today. She was the project manager. Number two is Gabriel Vega. Is Gabriel here today? Gabriel, would you stand? please just remain standing for a moment and if you would hold your applause until afterwards. Jeremy Kavanis, now Jeremy was gonna be here but that center is out riding in the MS 150. So we're pulling for him the day that he comes in in the front and then Mary Miles was our staff liaison, my assistant, if you stand, let's appreciate them this morning for the 1619 Project.

3:21 Yeah, worthy. Amen, thank you. There you go, give it up for your own team. and especially for our children and our youth to be able to stare their history in the face weekly when they come on campus. I can never forget how important it was for me when Dr. Durkee, she's a blessed memory now, these were the days where you could smoke in class. My professor was smoking in class. Dr. Durkee. And Dr. Durkee put one of the first books of African American history in my hand. I was a voracious reader, probably by force more than choice, because I worked in the Houston Public Library.

4:20 And I had to stack books, and if you keep books in your hand, eventually you'll start reading some of them. So I would just read. And one of the books she put in my hand was Before the Mayflower, Leron Bennett's book, that traces the lineage of Africans and African Americans before we were carted off across the transatlantic slave trade. And so I've always wanted to keep my history before myself and before my children to remind them not only who they are, but the beautiful lineage that they come from of princes and queens and people of great resolve, that they know that they belong to that.

5:09 So thank you for doing that. Now, you don't have to stand because I'll get to it in a moment, but open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 6. Last week I was sitting in worship. Rarely do I have moments like this, but it happened while I was seated that I felt an impression of the Lord's spirit saying, say something about me on Sunday from this chapter, Isaiah 6. And I will just hang a tag over this text. commissioned to do a mission, commissioned to do a mission. If someone walked up to you and asked you about your journey of life, most of you could map it out in some way or another.

6:15 We use different words to help us communicate our life's story to other people. Sometimes we say, I'm on a journey. Others may use the term I am on a pilgrimage or I am pilgrimaging through life. Some say I'm walking through life, stages of life. And a few of you old enough to remember the blockbuster book titled Passages. Gail Sheehy wrote this and had no idea that it would become a runaway blockbuster as she looked at the passages that people take through life.

7:04 The passage of rootlessness are, as she described it, uprooting from the nuclear family. And then she talked about the passage of the 20s, she called it the trying 20s, where people set their face forward on what they believe that their life work will be. And then she described the 30s as the decade of deadlines where you may go back and undo what you did in those 20s, either reflect on it or you may correct it. And then she went on to talk about other periods of life but it was namely the 20s the 30s and the 40s that we go through passages and it became a blockbuster I remember reading excerpts of that book and what stood out the most for me in these passages because each passage was a meaningful passage.

8:20 God was nowhere on the pages. Now the book was not intended to be a piece of theological literature but I thought that for me since these passages were so important, pulling up stakes, moving forward, going to school, taking on a career or in the military or some trade, looking forward, then looking backwards to straighten out maybe what you had blundered in your 20s, now in your 40s, to set your face and stay there until some period of retirement. I know you can tell this is a 1974 book because today nobody stays much with anything for too long. But my point is not about the longevity of career as much as it is, does God fit anywhere in the passages of life?

9:19 more and more I'm noticing that God is disappearing I remember once I was invited to speak at Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham. And this was in 1999, I believe it is, as I think. And I was to speak to a group of people. And I remember talking about at that point in 99, being in Alabama, the Bible Belt we call the South. And I just responded when somebody said that. I don't know if we're a Bible belt. We might be Bible suspenders now, but I don't know if we're Bible belt anymore. and God seems to be vanishing.

10:16 from the portraits of American life. He almost is a byword now. God is almost gone. is why I ask you to turn your attention to and open your Bibles to Isaiah 6 of a vision that Isaiah had of a commission to do mission.

10:53 Almost immediately, if you grew up around church, when I said mission, you just checked out. What you thought about Fifth Sunday and here we go about to take an offering up to help some people. Versus understanding the real importance of what mission is. this passage in Isaiah 6 becomes one of the famous chapters in the Bible almost all of you know it even if you hadn't read it in 20 years you say oh I remember that I remember they read that every time we had a mission Sunday I remember that every time somebody had been called to preach they read this I remember every time we needed to raise money for a project the fame chapter for those of you that haven't read it let me read it for you in Isaiah 6 you don't have to stand beginning at verse 1 and concluding at verse 8 just hear what is taking place and you'll see why it's such a famous passage in the year the king Uzziah died when I looked down and began to read I almost said ought to just recite it I remember it from the King James Version.

12:23 Here's the NIV's way of presenting The commission and the mission of the prophet Isaiah 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.

12:50 Above him was seraphim, each with six wings. With two wings he covered his face, and with two wings he covered their feet, and with two wings they were flying. and they were calling to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is filled with his glory. At the sound of their voices, the door posts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. woe to me God cried I'm ruined for I'm a man of unclean lips I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the king the Lord almighty then one of the seraphims flew to me with a live coal in his hand which he had taken with the tongues from the altar 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 Whom shall I send Who will go for us I would read the last line but you need to answer it for yourself Maybe I'll just hold that because I've noticed A lot of Christians say a lot of things That they really don't mean Passages Monumental moments in life that causes people to pause and look In the rear view mirror and retrace their steps

14:56 But God doesn't seem to be very much in the picture anymore Before that can be a mission or a commission There has to be a vision and visions sometimes come when something significant in our life has been taken away thus is the occasion of the vision of the prophet Isaiah who's princely and poetic and if you've ever tried to read him you pick up that he works with poetic prose very well he's considerably different from his contemporaries who writes in a more prosaic way he writes in lofty language and has had an association with the kings and the kingly courts and this year 740 BC in the year that King Uzziah died The nation of Judah had been doing well Everything was in its favor The word prosperity could be attached to his kingly rule But in the year that Uzziah died A nation that was on the incline now was on the decline Things started unraveling and falling apart. But have you noticed that often God has to move someone out of a seat in order for you to lift your gaze through the throne. Sometimes seats have to be emptied in order for God to get our gaze up to see what's really on the throne in the year that King Uzziah died.

17:02 As long as the goblets are filled with goods to drink and the table is loaded with good things to eat and as long as life is replete with so many wonderful and abundant things, we often take our gaze off of God. I heard you thinking. I just heard you. and I appreciate it because I thought the same thing. That used to be true.

17:33 And now God can empty seats and when people don't believe that there's a God, they won't even lift their gaze. We witness this in our country. A nation that has claimed to be 90% born again. You don't believe me? Just look to the left and right Look forward and behind you Born again We just love Jesus and in the year that King Uzziah died Isaiah who had kept his attention on the horizontal plane of life now has to raise his gauge upward to an empty earthly throne, to a presently occupied eternal throne in the year that King Uzziah died.

18:56 There was a manifestation of something that was beyond his own ability to describe. Listen to it. The danger of reading a passage like Isaiah 6 is that you're so familiar with it. It's one of those pages that's dirty in the Bible. I mean physically dirty. You turn to it so much. like Psalm 23. You've read it so much until that page is limp. but you can read it and never read it it's no longer virginal it becomes soiled and sullen and it becomes so typical until you just rotely begin to memorize the words in the year that King Uzziah died there was a manifestation of God let me see if I can write it down and remember Isaiah is a poet prophet he writes with prose he knows how to work with words and the best that he can do in doing this it says in that year I also saw the Lord you know one of the joys of preaching to you is that you've been with me some of you so long until you become theological thinkers yourself because I heard you think a second time now how did Isaiah see the Lord when God is pure spirit and that's invisible and you can't see it and you're right what did he mean that I saw the Lord it would be the equivalent of somebody

21:02 saying at high noon I stared right into the gaze of the sun at the sun's fullest strength What is this revelation or manifestation that he sees that he is talking about? And I saw the Lord. He didn't see the Lord.

21:31 John 1, 18 testifies that no one has ever seen God. 1 Timothy 6, 16, The young preacher says as he and his mentor Paul are in exchange in that benediction. God the eternal, immortal, invisible.

21:55 Genesis 32 where Jacob is wrestling with God. And what did he say? You remember it? From Sunday school. I wrestled with God and I saw him face to face. well how can you not see God and see God I'm glad you ask God adapts himself into a form in which we're able to see when Isaiah said I saw the Lord he is not talking about I saw God omnipotent God omnipresent God omniscient he didn't see that He actually saw what was around God. God allowed him, as you say, I saw God wash the world last night with his sweet showers from on high.

22:51 And when morning came, I saw him hanging out to dry. you've seen God you saw him this morning you've ever seen a morning glory when God the king peeps his light over the dark horizon and breaks out in rosary colors You and I have never watched the sunset together. And I can tell you what you say. Get the camera. Look at that evening glory.

23:29 And you know at that moment that this is not accidental. That this is not just a hint of nature. This is God reminding you that I am still in control of everything. In the year that Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.

24:02 And look at the revelation of the position and the praise, high and exalted NIV. Most of you have just said like me, high and lifted up. you know what high and lifted up or high and exalted means? It means that God is holy other. Hagios is the word for holy, that God is separate, holy other. There is none like him. As I sat in my seat last week and I believe God laid on my heart to revisit Isaiah 6. It was because I believed that what people need now is a grander vision of God to see God anew, to know that God is God and there is none that is besides him.

25:01 This is a passage mom and dad You ought to read to your children filled with wonder and excitement. One poet said it that way, that wonder is involuntary praise.

25:24 What's wrong in worship now is everybody's explaining everything. We don't have enough holy, I don't know. and the pastor who's the resident theologian knows the answer to every question of manifestation and revelation. How can you know that much? There ought to be a hunch, a holy hint of somebody saying, I don't know. All I know is God is. high and lift it up. That's his position. His train fills the temple. you remember when lady died married in the cathedral in England You remember the length of a train?

26:36 She was at the altar and they were still pulling in the train. that's what Isaiah was saying I don't see God but I see all of what's around God and his holy robe his train is filling up the temple and when you get dull with life look around and God's holy train his robe is filling up the temple you saw it this morning when he woke you up? His position. He's high And lifted up That's his vision and the angels the seraphims the burning ones, these angels display a few things.

27:47 they display humility and activity and availability you see it because in their humility look at what they do they have six wings to cover their face and two wings to cover their face and two wings to cover their feet and two wings to fly. Their humility that they cover their face and their feet. They cover their face to remind us that today not even we can look upon God. They cover their feet like Moses did. Take off your shoes. You're standing on holy ground. If you and I could create that kind of mystery in church again, we could change the temperature when we walked in here.

28:42 This is holy ground. I still love people who come to church and I can always tell what generation or era they come from and you say something, they say, boy, don't say that. We in church. We need some more of that mystery again. Don't you say that.

29:09 We're in church. Humility. activity. Look at these seraphs, the burning ones, flying all over the place, ceaselessly moving, always at the command of God. availability to do what God has called them to do. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high lifted up his train, filled the temple. And these seraphims were around. And what were they doing? Making a confession. Holy, holy, holy. The Lord Almighty, the whole earth is filled with his glory. If glory is not on earth, it ain't the sinner's fault, it's our fault. Now I don't let anybody put guilt trips on me as a Christian When things go awry in the world and they say where is the church I don't let anybody put that load on me I remember when 68,000 people gathered in the city of Houston after George Floyd had been killed and captured live on streams or streaming devices.

30:41 And in Houston, some young lady said, well, where is the church? Where is the church? She thought she was saying something. And I said, these people never put the microphone in the right mouth. Because I wish that they would have stopped me that day what I said. Where is the church? I said the church is on the front stage. There go the mayor. He go to church. There's Sheila Jackson Lee. She go to church. There's Al Green. He goes to church. We wouldn't be here If it were not for the church And stop letting people When they say Where is the church You need to say Don't you see me I'm in the church. Now you already see I won't finish this.

31:42 So I'm just giving you the highlights of what happened. Now, that's the vision. The reaction was simply this. And the reaction is threefold. There is a universal reaction to all of this. and that is that when Isaiah saw this, he says, my goodness, the earth shook, the doorposts shook. So you see the significance of that. You start saying the inanimate shook. The personal shook let me just hold one thing up in my last three minutes in seven, six, five, four seconds just one thing what I'm getting to that the earth shook the inanimate, I like that I remember going to the unveiling Of the pipe organ at Brentwood Baptist Church Diane Bish was one of the guests Dr. Jimmy Abington was another guest I'll never forget sitting there for the opening And Jimmy Abington at Brentwood Baptist Church Where Dr. Joe Samuel Ratliff pastors Peel those organs and hit that lower register I'll never forget it Now you're listening to a I'm a Philistine when it comes to music I know nothing about it But I knew when those pipes started peeling You could feel the floor rumbling I said that's church there in certain services when

33:49 Hanyo and whatever music we're doing and Kenny is doing they'll set the music and literally if you come up on the stage you can hear the music rumbling under the floor that's what happened to Isaiah that day when he had that vision and the reaction of the people in the temple it was moving things That we're not supposed to move And here's what happened. Verse five. Woe is me.

34:28 I'm a man of unclean lips. And I live among people with unclean lips, but my eyes have seen the Lord. Woe is me. My big brother in the ministry, Dr. Lee Zachary Maxi pastors in North Chicago and I remember when he had come home from Yale at our church and he gave me a definition for whoa I said Zach you are a rhetorician you are a New Testament scholar whoa he said Ralph whoa means ooh-wee. When Isaiah saw God high and lifted up, he just said, Ooh-wee.

35:33 And many of you who responded Apparently you've had some moments Where God has made himself so real to you You say, ooh oui Thank you. When you get a chance, those of you that have taken notes, just write Isaiah 53 down because this is an immediate correspondence to Isaiah 53 that he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. And this is what happened in verse 6 and I'm done now. When one of the seraphims flew over Took the hot cove with the tongues Laid it on my lips and touched my mouth And my sins have been taken away This is not limited to Isaiah 6 by the way Isaiah 6 is the coming attraction of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

36:48 Whatever the vision and the revelation is that Isaiah is having, he knows that it will not compare to that great coming somebody on the horizon whose name is Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father. He knows that He's already testified about that And now he's here to remind us That there is one coming Who will take our sins away I want you as a church Learn to shout at the right time Your sins have been taken away He says your sins Not you made a mistake Not I blew it And this is bad church language, bad theology. When somebody gets up and they're trying to appeal to the contemporary conscience of the church and they say to you, when we blew it, when we made, when God did with our stuff, you tell them, say, call it sin.

37:59 Because Jesus ain't died for my stuff. He didn't die for my blunder. He died for my sin Because all He died for was my stuff Somebody else can satisfy that I need a Savior that's able to deal with my sin That's why we took the bread and the cup this morning To remember, do this in remembrance of me I'm done now. And so a great vision before I can become involved in mission starts with a commission of a vision or the vision that commissions me to missions.

38:52 Tomorrow, Jewel is going to fly out to the border And we're going to be represented at the border With Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Remember those initials CBF But at the same time that we're at the border

39:16 for these hundreds and thousands of Ukrainians are coming, we're there because we've also stood at other borders when people that look like you and look like me have been turned away. That's why we could stand at that board. To say it's very nice What you're doing It's humanitarian It is right But there are some other people You're going to give these people Once they get here You're going to give them tax credits You're going to give them housing There are some other people Who have been here much longer than that That deserve that same Economic equity Yay.

40:07 And we demand that. that's what Isaiah says when he says to the question, whom shall I send? That's my last move.

40:29 Our submission to the vision and who will go for us. I can't go for God if I'm only representing a one-sided vision of God. He's got the whole world in his hand. He's got you and me, brother, in his hand. He's got you and me, sister, in his hands. He's got the whole wide world in his hand. red, yellow, black, and white. They are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the children of the world who will go for us. Whom shall we send?

41:23 You have to answer that yourself. I would answer it, but I can't answer it for you. You have to answer that. Sitting right at that seat I felt God make an impression Visit Isaiah 6 Remind my people And too often the pulpit is answered for the people When the people say that ain't my answer God is answering now as he did then, Whom shall I send?

42:05 Isaiah said, I was called to preach in 1975 my preaching and my calling should I say my call to salvation also in my preaching were almost simultaneous I didn't come to Christ for some length of time And then started preaching It was almost synonymous My calling was in a dream or vision I don't know which one it is I had not read through the scriptures I'd been hanging out at the church But I had not read through the scriptures I may have known more about God than I knew I knew about it I don't know I was not an exceptional teenager There was nothing that stood out and said He's gonna be None of that stood out for me This is not one of those woe is me ooh wee kind of testimonies It's the truth People that know me know that Anything that became whatever you see Was after a lot of reading, studying A lot of mentoring, growing But my calling In my dream or vision I don't know which one it was In my mother's house I saw a dove And that was nothing strange.

43:48 And then I saw the same dove in this dream, but its talons were the size and shape of an eagle. And I heard God's voice in my subconscious. speak very clearly that God was calling me to mission, to the mission of preaching.

44:19 The dove, you know, is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. And I said, but why in the world those claws? Well, you know, the eagle is this big powerful bird and then I didn't know that the Holy Spirit had come in power. You see how clear that vision was to me? I have made many missteps along my journey. I have strayed, I have been derailed,

45:02 I have deliberately, more than anybody else, found myself where I should not be. but there's one thing that has never one time through all of my failures ever been a question for me.

45:29 I know God saved me and I know God called me. I want you sometimes to tell people that about your life. That's what you know. People would try to tell you All kind of things About you But they wasn't there That the day the Lord Saved my soul And I'm trying, I'm not trying, I'm helping somebody now.

46:32 In this room at home. You supposed to be a Christian. No, I ain't supposed to be. I am that. I remember some of my friends They said you're supposed to be a preacher I said well I am that I am that And that's what Isaiah meant. After all of that, he said, who would go for us? Whom shall I send? And I don't know why God would send you Pastor West, I know God's calling me to serve him In this area of ministry To teach or to administer or help But I don't know why God would call you I wouldn't call you Now what I say about myself, I don't know, I don't know.

47:43 Because I sure wouldn't call you Ralph. but he did and he has and that's what he's done for you so what do you do since he's done it serve him serve him serve him limping like Jacob serve him repenting like David serve him broken like Mary Serving with a background like Paul Serving with a field like John Mark Serving until the Lord says Serving well done You've been faithful over a few things Now get on up here And let me make you ruler over many things Hallelujah I can shout on that myself yes Lord we thank you for this morning for your people and we ask you now help us to have a new vision a new reaction of response to you and a submission.

49:14 Here I am, Lord. Use me any way that you can. Use me until you're satisfied. In the name of Jesus Christ. For those that are at home and here who need you and need the church, the choir's gonna sing. And we pray, Lord, that the Holy Spirit do his work. In Jesus' name and for his sake we pray. and God's people say amen. Hallelujah. The door to church is open. Our leaders are standing. We invite you to come down the aisle and receive the grace that only God can give.