Tuesday, September 30 – Isaiah 6:8-13

“Here am I, send me!” This is probably a top-10 quoted verse from the Bible. As Isaiah is given the vision of being in God’s heavenly throne room, he is awestruck and yearns to be used by God. Yearns to be the prophet that God calls him to be. “Here am I, send me!” is the cry of his heart.

I think this is beautiful and should be our cry as well. But we do a disservice to our spiritual health when we read Isaiah 6:1-8 instead of Isaiah 6:8-13. When we end with the “Here am I, send me!”, we think everything is going to be awesome. But let Isaiah 6:9-13 be a warning… things will not always be awesome.

When Isaiah accepts his call, God tells him to call out the people for not understanding the message of the prophets. God tells him to tell the people to keep hearing but not understanding. And God tells him to keep doing it until Israel is destroyed. God sends him to preach to people who won’t listen, and Isaiah’s ministry will continue until 90% of the people have been removed and the land is desolate.

God does not call us to success, but he calls us to obedience. Isaiah was obedient to God’s call even when it was not favorable to his status and popularity in Israel. From the outside looking in, you’d call Isaiah’s ministry a failure because nobody listened to him. And from the outside looking in, you’d call Jonah’s ministry in Nineveh a success because the people listened and repented (spoiler alert from the rest of Jonah 3!). But was Jonah obedient to God’s call? Did Jonah have the heart of a prophet? Let’s come back to that question when we get to Jonah 4 next week.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%206%3A8-13&version=NASB