Howdy.
Twenty years ago, there was an election happening in Ukraine,
an election for president. There were two individuals that were standing out
as the main candidates to choose from. One of them wanted Ukraine to be more connected to Russia,
as they had been in the past, and the other wanted Ukraine to be more connected to the US,
the West and NATO. The second candidate's name was Victor Yushenko.
There was a contested election that happened, and their Supreme Court had to order a secondary election,
and Yushenko ended up winning to become the president. But Yushenko also was discovered to have been poisoned.
There was something that had been put presumably in his food called a dioxin. If you don't know what a dioxin is,
it is what is in the San Jacinto Bay that means we cannot go fishing there,
because a pulp from a paper mill had been left there decades ago,
and it only a few years ago began to get cleaned up because the EPA is forcing them to finally take care of it.
This dioxin began to disfigure Yushenko's face. It began to have pock marks and strange wrinkles and lesions all over.
This began to show on the outside that there was a toxin happening on the inside.
But what was interesting was that the reason why the skin was beginning to do this,
it turned out that his skin on his face was becoming a hahmatoma.
It was becoming a completely different organ. His body was trying so hard to fight the toxin inside
that it was changing his face into a second liver.
It was basically the only way that he was even able to survive until the doctors realized what was happening and were able to begin helping him.
So in this, what we ended up discovering was that he had not only been poisoned,
but that his body was showing it so that he could get help and was fighting it desperately in the meantime.
Of course, the Russian fact-finders at the time claimed that the whole thing was fake news to blast Putin,
claiming it was a cosmetics issue and giving the Russian people an easy answer so that they could ignore what was happening right in front of them.
This lesson we have from the Old Testament today of Isaiah is going to be teaching us three main things today.
One of them is the lesson that what is happening on the inside reveals itself on the outside.
What is happening on the inside reveals itself on the outside.
We are going to understand that as we look at Uzziah and how the mighty have fallen.
The beginning of our passage mentions that Isaiah was speaking when Uzziah has died,
and we may be thinking why is that such a big deal? It turns out that this setting is actually very meaningful for us.
Uzziah's father was named Amaziah. They didn't have fun names like Ted or Chuck back then,
but Amaziah as king had been doing many things that were pleasing to God,
but it's noted that he was pleasing to God but not like his father David.
It's important to remember that we should always be cautious when trying to compare any leader to David,
because David was above and beyond many others for one important reason,
because David was a man after God's own heart.
It wasn't just that he was doing things that were pleasing to God,
but that who he was on the inside was humble and was willing to listen when he had done wrong and needed to repent.
People like Amaziah were not like David. His pride became his downfall.
He had won a battle against Edom, and at the time went to Israel, the northern part of the kingdom,
also called Ephraim, and as king of Judah wanted to make a treaty and to prove that he was just as powerful as Israel,
and the king there basically said, Ha, no, you are not.
And the two of them went to battle and Judah lost.
Amaziah was captured and they ended up ransacking Jerusalem at the time.
Amaziah became so unpopular that assassins came after him, and he had to run and hide in Lakers,
to the point where his 16-year-old son Uzziah had to become his co-regent, king alongside him,
because he'd never be able to return.
The assassins eventually found him and killed him as a result of his pride, instead of letting God be his true victory.
But Uzziah was following God, and it mentions, like his father, Amaziah.
Uzziah, whose nickname was Azariah, that just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
Like his father was doing things that were pleasing to God on the outside,
and because of that, there were many blessings that happened.
He was able to create great building projects and large farming projects throughout the kingdom,
and had a large military.
There were many blessings, even as we saw that with Solomon in the past,
is that we realized that he was becoming a great king in so many ways,
but not in the way that David had been.
Because there were still many issues with false idols.
The high places were still in place throughout the kingdom.
You're going to hear this a lot in the Old Testament.
They did not remove the high places.
And you may wonder, what in the world is such a big deal?
Why is it so important that everybody had to go down to Jerusalem and worship at the temple?
Why couldn't you just have your own little altar in places throughout the whole country?
But here is the problem.
The people actually knew how the worship was supposed to happen,
and did it properly, was in Jerusalem.
All the other places people were worshiping in whatever way they thought made the most sense,
which meant that they were not always sacrificing the animals that God wanted,
sometimes not even sacrificing animals at all,
sometimes even sacrificing their own children.
Or the times whenever that they might have those who sold their bodies for worship.
Or even times where it's not even an altar at all, but rather worshiping at a local tree.
To realize that these high places, the reason that they were even left up was because
the kings didn't want to offend the local wealthy and influential people,
because these altars were a way that they not only had power,
but also made a little extra money themselves.
So instead Uzziah left them up, and his own pride got the best of him.
Because then he decided he wanted to go into the temple,
and not just be a governmental ruler, but instead become ruler of the temple.
And he went in to make a sacrifice himself, and became struck with leprosy.
Leprosy could have meant many things at that time,
but in this context was realizing it was so serious that he would no longer be allowed to be around people,
and went into exile for the rest of his life.
And his son Jotham had to take his place, like father, like son.
And that's the thing with this, is realizing that as much as he had been so powerful and influential
during his time, and appeared in many ways to be doing things pleasing to God,
those blessings did not reveal what was happening on the inside.
And eventually he had a legacy of disgrace,
even as in death he wasn't even allowed to be buried with the other kings.
But what would this eventually mean?
His pride, his arrogance,
Isaiah saw the downfall of his king and wondered, how would this affect Judah?
How would this affect him?
What now for Isaiah and Judah?
And that's the thing about this, is that as we're looking to see what would happen now for Isaiah and Judah,
what we see is that Isaiah asks the question, how could he be worthy?
There was a larger than life leader who was brought low and was now dead.
So then what would happen for him?
And Isaiah, looking at this, saying, I am unworthy.
So at this point, his humility causes him to then also wonder what would happen to Judah as well.
But Isaiah is not willing to just jump in and assume that he could speak for God.
He knew that God had to be the one to make him worthy.
And so God brings a coal, possibly a hot stone, but more likely a live coal to touch his lips.
See, it turns out that purifying his lips was not just about making sure that what he said was blessed by God,
but also who he was, because he himself needed to be purified.
It's not just what comes out of us, but also asking what's happening within us.
Are we being forgiven and purified by God?
Something that is not easy. Burning is never something comfortable,
but rather is to kill off the old parts for the new.
But that's Isaiah. What about the people?
See, as much as Isaiah knew that the true king was not Uzziah, but rather was God himself, did Judah understand this?
Because the difficulty was that the kings had a habit as the leaders of leading the people into the same sins that they themselves committed.
They had a habit of creating a pattern that showed the wrong way for people to live.
And that shows us the second main thing that we want to make sure we learn from today's passage is that what is obvious can still be denied when we want it to be.
What may very well be obvious is something we can still deny whenever we want to deny it.
See, I have to tell you something. There's a story from back when I was a pastor in California.
There was this time where I was up in the balcony in the church and the organ was actually up there in the balcony.
And there were a couple of kids that are up there and I thought, see, I was the youth pastor at the time, I'm going to have a little bit of fun.
That's what youth pastors do. That's how we scar children for the future.
But realizing this, I thought, hey, you know what, I'm going to tell them that there's a goblin inside of the organ.
And so I went and said, oh, have you seen the goblin inside of the organ?
And they're like, what are you talking about?
I'm like, look, look, you can see them.
And I'm like, look, and I'm like pointing inside because the organ was shaped a certain way where the pipes went around it.
They're like, no, you're ridiculous.
And I kept saying, so convincingly, he is right there.
I can see him. Why can't you see him?
And then all of a sudden one of the children says, oh, I think I see him.
And I realized what I had done.
Ran quickly to the boy's mother, confessed what I had done in the hopes that she could make sure that she helped her child realize the difference between reality and make believe.
Because I had managed to convince him that something was there when it wasn't.
The thing is, is that people can oftentimes be convinced of something, even when it should be obvious that it isn't really there.
People can easily take something and then be convinced of it no matter what the reality might be.
The passage that we had today, the way it's worded, it sounds in many ways at the surface that God had a whole group of people that he didn't want to actually know or confess their sin.
That there was a whole group of people that he wanted to be stuck in their condemnation.
And the difficulty is that many people turn that into a form of predestination in other churches that God has somehow predestined people to be going to hell.
The rest of Isaiah and many other passages of scripture demonstrate that God has made it so that all people, he wants all people to know him and to be confess of their sins and to come to salvation.
He wants that.
So then what is really this passage trying to get across?
The thing with this is to realize that in here there's meant to be a harder off ramp.
See, the thing is, is that Isaiah began in repentance.
Isaiah was willing to acknowledge his own unworthiness.
Isaiah was willing to look and to go through what was needed to be changed because purification is not easy.
It requires pain.
It's difficult.
It's something that we have to struggle through.
But it can transform us over time.
The thing about that is that Isaiah was willing to let God put him through what was needed.
But what about the people?
What about the people themselves?
Because Judah, they weren't being predestined to go to hell.
But the difficulty was that they were very stubborn.
The difficulty is that whenever we have an easy out, whenever we have an easy way of being able to just say,
Oh, you know what?
Yeah, that's my bad.
Oops.
I'm sorry.
Oftentimes we don't really change.
Whenever we can just say, Oh, yeah, this one thing, this one thing was wrong.
I, yeah, I'm sorry about that.
My bad.
But and we still end up holding on to everything else.
There are times whenever God has to let us wallow in our stubbornness so that the real consequences can really be revealed.
He lets us get stuck in our mindset that we hold on to until the consequences are so severe that they finally help us realize how bad we were truly were.
Sometimes we need the full consequence before we can actually change.
But Isaiah, he was still supposed to go out there and tell them he still was meant to go out and to proclaim even to a people that was hard hearted.
We oftentimes can be hard hearted.
But we're still supposed to hear the word of God.
And even whenever we may be saying, Oh, I learned something today, God may still have to take the time to really drive it home, not because he's trying to hurt us, but because he needs to get our attention.
Because that's the third part is that the process of recovery is hard and long. But it is necessary.
The process of recovery, it's hard and long.
But it is what's necessary to truly change.
You see, we saw in many ways that Uzziah was able to do things that looked pleasing to God, but on the inside he had never truly humbled himself.
See, to be true to God's command, it's more than just what we see on the outside.
Being true to God's command is whenever God has truly changed our hearts.
See, Uzziah was blessed, but his heart was still prideful.
Blessing doesn't always reveal everything happening with God.
Just because God is allowing us to be blessed does not mean that everything is right.
It doesn't mean that everything has been dealt with because even as Isaiah needed to be purified with fire, the only way to actually deal with Judah was eventually to let them, the poison, damage the outside of their country and send them into exile.
That's what we saw with Yushenko.
What was happening on the inside was showing up on the outside.
But it was also the same thing that was happening with Judah and the same thing that also often is happening with us.
Is that as much as the outside, we may want it to look and appear that we are doing well, the outside eventually becomes damaged to reveal the help that we need on the inside.
We may not always want to face things.
We may not always want to look at the obvious.
And maybe it's going to get so bad until eventually we are broken and we cannot avoid it any longer.
But that does not mean it's because God doesn't love us.
It's because God wants to finally help us to see our need for him.
We may have the Russian fact finders who want us to stay distracted and to miss out on what's truly needed.
But in reality, God's word is always wanting to bring us to true restoration.
God may humble us, but it's only so that the pain can get us back to where we need to be because as children of God, we need to be convicted.
We may not respond when it went right away, but God is still speaking to us and he still wants the same as we go out of the world.
The world may not be willing or ready yet to hear it, but he's still calling us to speak it.
But in reality, the repenting has to start with us even when it hurts.
Because even as the chemo may have to damage the body, it may be needed to kill the cancer inside.
And God had to use a cross to kill his own son, to kill his son's body in order to revive our souls.
I don't know what God may be doing or may need to do someday in each of our lives.
But I do know that whatever it may be, and even if we struggle to wonder where God's blessings may be, we can willingly trust him and to let him break our hearts.
Because at the end of the day, he is still calling us back to himself because it is only through him to be people after God's own heart like David and Isaiah.
That we too, and so can the world, follow him in both spirit and in truth, no matter what we or anyone else may want us to see instead.
May God continue to break our hearts and to help us see what he needs us to go through.
Thanks be to God.