Whom Shall I Send?

After Isaiah sees the Lord sitting on His throne, high and lifted up, with His robe filling the Temple, surrounded by angelic beings, he humbles himself because he knows the depths of his sin and fears that he might not survive this vision. He heard the angels crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of Hosts.’ He felt the trembling of the threshold and saw the Temple filling with the smoke of God’s glory. He cried out, ‘Woe is me for I am undone!’ And then his unclean lips are cleansed and his sins forgiven. 

It is in this state that Isaiah hears the voice of God from the throne speak, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’ And like Peter on the mount of Transfiguration opening his mouth to ask if they needed to build booths for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, Isaiah’s mouth opens and he hears himself say, ‘Here am I, send me!’ His newly cleansed lips automatic response is to volunteer for any service the LORD has need of. 

So the LORD responds to Isaiah, ‘Go and tell these people: ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand.’ Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears full, and their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed.’ This mission was not a glorious revival that would see many people repent and return to the LORD. In fact it was the opposite.  Isaiah would preach, but the people would not be able to understand what he was saying because God had blocked their ability to understand.

On hearing this Isaiah asks for how long he needed to do this. How long did he need to preach to a people who would not get the actual message? God answered in reply, ‘Until cities are debated and without inhabitants, houses are without people, and the land is utterly desolate, the LORD has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.’ This service to God would see the land of Israel given over to the calamities promised by Moses and agreed to by Joshua and the children of Israel on entrance to the promised land.

They had agreed to the covenant and wrote it on stones at the base of Mt Ebal and Mt Gerizim. Blessings for obedience, but curses for disobedience. And since Israel and Judah had walked away to serve other gods, the calamities had been coming for some time, at least since the days of Solomon. They kept getting worse until God declared His judgment on Israel. It would be exiled by their enemies and the land left empty. Isaiah would preach until this happened.

With this judgment issued from the LORD, God also promised to reserve Himself a remnant. A portion would be spared. ‘Yet there will be a tenth portion in it, and it will again be subject to burning, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains in the field when it is felled. The holy seed is in its stump.’ Though the nation would be cut down like an oak tree, the stump would remain and grow again.  There was hope that this would not be a permanent judgment, but that God would bless His people again.