In this sermon, the speaker begins by sharing a personal anecdote about giving away most of his clothes. He then expresses his humility as a preacher and acknowledges that there are others who are better at it. He emphasizes the importance of understanding who God truly is and how this understanding is crucial for comprehending the sacrifice of Jesus. The speaker concludes by urging the audience to be ambassadors of God, delivering His words and recognizing the holiness and glory of Yahweh. He also highlights the need for a strong foundation in knowing who they are speaking for and who has sent them, especially in times of trial and tribulation.

Well, it is an honor to be with you. Yes, I did give away about 85% of my clothes last week. My son took about a quarter of them, which means I'm now smaller than my son, which is a very odd feeling. But that's OK. It is good to be with you. We have very limited time. And there is much that I want to share with you. I want to begin by complaining about the previous two speakers, both of whom have managed to put all the pressure on me. And the problem is I do not consider myself much of a preacher. I do preach. I'm an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, and so it is part of my duties to preach. But I recognize, for example, that my fellow elder there is significantly better than I am at the art of preaching. It is an art. It is something that you get better and better at. I am very thankful that while he graduated in the 1970s from Covenant Seminary, that he is significantly better at that craft today than he was then. And I recognize this is something you grow in. I am much more of a teacher, much more of an apologist and a debater. And yet, when we did a radio program about, what, a month, month and a half or so ago, I forget exactly when it was that we did the radio program, I heard mention of the fact that today would be preaching. And so I felt just a little bit intimidated by that. But I'm going to give it my best shot, and hopefully the Lord, by His Spirit, will edify you as well. Turn with me, please, to Isaiah chapter 6. I wish to speak to you as brothers and sisters in the Lord who have expressed interest in standing as a herald, as an ambassador, as one speaking for God in a wicked and perverse generation. We just had it mentioned. Hopefully most of you are aware. Maybe some of you are traveling, so you're not aware. But even in our own land, within the past 48 hours, we have had further great evidence given of the depravity that expresses itself even in the highest levels of our government, and in this case, our judiciary here in the United States. We have had it said to us by a federal judge, who is himself a homosexual, that gender is no longer relevant to marriage. Could any of us have believed? I'm finally getting old enough to start using language like this. Could any of us have ever believed in only a few decades ago that the day would come when we would have men standing before us who have the force of law behind their words saying gender no longer has anything to do with marriage? My friend's marriage was established by the creator in the garden, and the Lord Jesus Christ spoke about marriage, and he said it was a part of God's creative ordinance, and anybody who would mess with that marriage would be messing with God. And we live in a day of great perversity and great depravity, and yet we want to stand and speak God's truth. I suggest to you that the only way you can do that with consistency over time is if you, and I'm speaking to each of you individually, if each one of you individually is absolutely confident, convicted, you believe in your heart that you are a follower of the one true God. Not one God amongst many gods. Not one opinion amongst many opinions. We live in a day where people couch that, well, I think it's like this. Well, I don't care what an individual thinks. When it comes to the matters of eternity, I want to know what God says. And I would suggest to you that the only way that you will be here five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, still convicted and convinced that what you're doing is God's will in your life is if you stand upon a foundation of knowing who it is you are speaking for and who has sent you. We can talk about all the methodologies in the world. You can practice and have answers to every question there is. But have you noticed something interesting? Just the last two speakers, I was unaware of this, just the last two speakers, both have said something. Mark mentioned he had a tremendous difficulty in his own life just a few days ago. Eric mentioned a few years ago. I don't care what your life is, you are going to encounter deep, dark times of trial and tribulation. Betrayal and pain will be a part of every one of our lives. And if you are not absolutely convinced that the eternal God of creation has called you to do what you are doing, you'll find something else to do. Have you ever noticed, maybe there are other conventions you go to, other conferences you go to, and you see people regularly for a while. And then years later, you're standing around and you're talking with people and someone mentions a name, you go, I haven't seen that guy in ages. What happened to him? And eyes go down toward the floor and people shuffle around. Well, he isn't a Christian anymore, he's an atheist. Or he's just a pagan. And you go, what could have happened? Well, the scriptures tell us, he who endures to the end shall be saved. That is not a verse to be afraid of. That is a descriptive verse, that describes saving faith. It endures to the end, not because it comes from me, but because it's the work of God's spirit within me. But it endures, and that means it goes through a lot. We need to know the God that we serve that has called us to do what we are doing, or we will end up doing something else. I'm going to read to you Isaiah chapter six, but it's not gonna sound necessarily like what you have. The reason is, I am reading you a translation that I did of the text from the Greek Septuagint. Now, if I forget to explain to you why, I'm giving you the Greek Septuagint rendering, before the end of the sermon, someone wave a hand at me and say, would you explain that? I'm supposed to get around to it, but sometimes I get preaching and I get lost, and it's sort of like what happened with Eric. He slapped himself and lost where he was going. I did that just last Sunday. I didn't slap myself, but just last Sunday at my church, I was in the middle of this great illustration, and then I stopped and said, what was I talking about? I had absolutely no idea where it was. So that might happen to me too. The big five-oh is staring me in the face, and I'm starting to already utilize that as an excuse over and over again. It's a lot of fun. Might as well use it for something. I will explain why I'm giving you the Septuagint translation. Listen to the word of the Lord. And it happened that in the year when King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated upon the throne, lofty and exalted, and the house was full of His glory. And seraphim stood above Him, each one having six wings. With two, He covered His face. With two, He covered His feet. With two, He flew. And they call out to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. And the foundations were lifted up by the sound of the one calling out, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, oh, I am wretched because I am pierced through. For I, being a man having unclean lips, dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the Lord of hosts. And He sent to me one of the seraphs, and in his hand he carried a fiery coal, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he placed it upon my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips and has taken away your lawlessness and has cleansed your sins. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go to this people? I said, behold, here I am, send me. And He said, go and say to this people, hearing you will hear and yet not understand, and seeing you will see but will not perceive. For the heart of this people has grown thick. And their ears are dull of hearing. They have closed their eyes that they see with their eyes or hear with their ears and understand with their heart. And they turn back and I heal them. And I said, for how long, Lord? He said, until the cities are desolate for being uninhabited and the houses, for there being no men, and the land being forsaken will be desolate. And after this, God will remove the men far away and they that are left upon the land shall be multiplied. And yet there shall be a tent upon it. And again, it shall be for a spoil as a terebinth tree and as an acorn when it falls out of its husk. We are all familiar with this text. If any of you have never listened to R.C. Sproul preach upon it, I would suggest you do so. I am not going to try to recreate R.C. Sproul's classic work on this text. But I would like to explain a few things and then try to make application in the context of those who would stand and speak to an adulterous and perverse generation. You must know that you are called as a representative of a holy God. And when you know that the eyes of this holy God are upon you, my prayer is that you will never give in to the temptation to compromise before the face of men. If you know your God, then you will never fear the faces of his creatures. Here is a tremendous revelation of who this God is. King Uzziah had reigned for many years. There had been stability. Unfortunately, sadly, he had not ended well. And I think there's something about the age of 45, you get past it and you start thinking about your own end. You start thinking about eternity. You think about the future. And I know one of my greatest prayers is, Lord, let me end well. I have seen so many who have not. And what a grace it is to end well. King Uzziah did not end well. And when someone who has reigned for a long period of time dies, there's disorder in the society. And that year, Isaiah saw the Lord, the Adonai, seated upon the throne, lofty and exalted, and the house was full of his glory. Now, some believe this was in the temple. I think that actually there's better evidence that in this context, Isaiah is looking into the very presence of God in heaven itself. He is seated upon the throne. We don't have a sense of kingship in our society. We threw him out when we founded this place. But it's all through the text of Scripture. That there are those who, by right, have authority and power. And that right is always derivative in Scripture from he who truly is the king, because he's the creator of all things. And he is seated upon the throne. Even in the midst of turmoil in Israel, God is still upon his throne. He's lofty and exalted. He's lifted up. This doesn't just simply mean he's a little bit higher, like I'm a little bit higher than you are right now. But he dwells in a realm, in a state that is beyond the mundane. He is lofty, he is exalted, and the house was full of his glory. If you can, in your mind, try to see the picture that Isaiah paints for us here. If you can imagine the heavenly temple, we have but a little glimpse of it in Revelation 4 and 5 if you've looked at it there. But I don't think that human words are up to really explaining what it is that Isaiah saw. He sees the Lord, the house is full of his glory, and then he sees the seraphim, these fiery creatures who stand above him, and each one has six wings. It's hard for us to even picture this. I'm not sure that we should try in some ways. Because the wings have certain functions. With two, he flies. We can see that use of a wing. But even these holy, special creatures, in the presence of this holy God, with two, they cover their face. But they have nothing to be ashamed of. They have no sin. And yet, they are creatures. And they are in the presence of the uncreated. All through this text, over and over again, we see that God is completely other. That's at the very root of what holiness means. And these creatures, even though they are greatly exalted, they cover their faces. They cannot gaze upon this glory that they are privileged to dwell in at all times. Two cover the face. Two cover the feet. Once again, holiness. Remember, when Moses approaches the burning bush, he is to take off those mundane instruments, footwear that allow us to walk the dusty paths of this world. Here, even exalted creatures cover their feet because the feet represent creatureliness. They are created. They are made. They have to travel in some way. And so there is a covering of that creatureliness. And what is their function? They cry out. They call out to one another. Can you see them? Can you hear them? Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. Now think with me for, again, one moment. What did they say? How could they say this? It's one thing to say thrice holy is Yahweh of hosts. We will come back to that in a moment. But the whole earth is full of his glory. Think back with me for just a moment to what Mark said when he read that letter, that very difficult letter that had been sent to him about all the suffering and evil in this world. That is a common argument that's being used today. And there are people that are very good at piling it on. But there was no more suffering or disease or darkness in this day. And some days you might say there was more. And yet, are these seraphim simply in denial? Or is it true that the whole earth is full of his glory? I submit to you that it takes the same type of special vision that was given to Isaiah to see the glory of the Lord in this way. The whole earth is full of his glory. You cannot look anywhere without seeing the glory of God if you but have the eyes to see. It is no mistake that over and over again in scripture, the state of the natural man is described as blindness and will be described in that way in just a few moments as we look at the text. You all know that this is the only place in all of scripture where one of the attributes of God is raised to the third degree. Holy, holy, holy. And I'm sure that you know that this term in its very root refers to separation. Separation. Think about in the Old Testament when the tabernacle was being built and was being dedicated, there were things that were made holy unto the Lord. Well, what did that mean? They were separated from their common use and given a special use only unto God. So things that you could use in your everyday life were called common, but if they were separated unto God's use, they were holy. There is a division, a separation. This then becomes foundational to the moral aspect of the holiness of God. God is absolutely pure. There is no shadow of turning in him. There is no darkness. He is light. But we need to understand that part of the very essence of idolatry is the denial to God of his holiness, his otherness. What is idolatry? Is it not ascribing that which is created, that which belongs to God alone? And so it involves making God like something he himself has made. The gods of men, the gods that you will hear people, maybe even this evening, saying, well, I don't believe in your God. You know, the only difference between you and me is I believe in one less God than you. You just believe in Thor. You don't believe in Zeus. I just believe in one less God than you do. There are atheists that use that kind of foolish argumentation, as if a belief in the Christian God is just one God amongst many gods. But you see, the gods of mankind that look like men and act like men and behave like men, they are not holy. They are not completely other. Yahweh of hosts, thrice holy, is completely other. He is not the great grandfather in the sky. And if we don't start here, we will never truly be able to wonder at the incarnation the way we should. We will never truly wonder at the humiliation, the condescension of Jesus, if we do not start with a recognition of who God has eternally been. God wasn't lonely in eternity. The triune God is complete and perfect and whole unto Himself. And He chose for His own purposes, not His needs, for His own purposes, to glorify Himself in creation. And that is always the heart of the biblical revelation, is that God is glorifying Himself. His lordship, His kingship, His creatorship never recedes into the background. And when we read the Bible as if we are its central message, we miss it completely. The seraphim cry out, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. And they don't say it quietly. The foundations were lifted up by the sound of the one calling out. And the house was filled with smoke. Can you imagine what Isaiah was feeling? Well, you don't have to imagine. He tells you, oh, I am wretched, woe is me. The Septuagint says, because I am pierced through. You could render the Hebrew, I am undone. I'm coming apart for I being a man, having unclean lips, dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean lips. My eyes have seen the Lord of hosts. There is something about seeing God's glory. Remember when Moses asked, one request, Lord, that I might look upon you. Moses, you can't, but I will put you in the cleft of the rock. And as I pass by, you can gaze at the aftershadow of my glory. Isaiah, probably the holiest man in Israel of his day. And yet when he sees God as God is, he sees himself as he is. I will return to this because it may be one of your greatest challenges in proclaiming the gospel in a land under the judgment of God, to get them to see themselves as they really are, not as they have been deceived by the secular humanist dogmas of our society, the machinery of the state-run education system that cranks out secular humanists, but to see themselves in the mirror of God's glory. That is a challenge. In fact, outside of the work of the spirit of God, it's not gonna happen, but it needs to be one of your goals. But note what happens. Isaiah recognizes the center of his sinfulness in what context? Isaiah is here being commissioned as a prophet. It has been well said that the priest in the old covenant paradigm spoke to God for men while the prophet spoke to men for God. But Isaiah is going to be using his mouth, his lips to speak forth the word of God. Is that not what you all desire to do? That's why I found this text to be so relevant in our context. Do you want your words to be your words or God's words? And so it is in that context that Isaiah recognizes his sinfulness. He recognizes his lips. I live amongst a people of unclean lips. Our words represent our hearts and they're dirty and they're defiled. They don't belong in this place. Surely we can understand even in his ignorance. Martin Luther. I've had the chance of teaching church history a few times. It's been a few years. I love exciting people about what God has done. Christ promised he would build his church and guess what? He's been doing it. And it's neat to look back and see what he's done. But I think Luther understood some of this when some of you know the story. I'll be very brief because I have other applications to make. But when he tried to say his first mass, this was before he understood justification, but he understood the holiness of God and he understood his own sin. When he tried to say his first mass, he got to the point where he would elevate the host and say, hocus corpus meum. This is my body. And in his mind at that time, he thought this is going to become the very body, blood, soul, and divinity of my God. And he couldn't do it. How could I, a sinful person, handle God himself? I'm not ready to encounter God in this way. His father who had come to see him was embarrassed beyond words. Part of one of the reasons he was sent off to become a professor. And aren't we glad that he did. But notice what God does. As soon as his presence brings conviction on his servant's heart, he provides a means of cleansing. But it wasn't an easy one. He doesn't say to Isaiah, don't worry about it Isaiah, I've got you covered. Instead he sends to Isaiah one of the seraphs. Notice only Isaiah says these words and God provides for Isaiah. He sent to me one of the seraphs and in his hand he carried a fiery coal which he had taken from the altar with tongs. Here is an angelic creature and yet he has to use tongs to take this fiery coal from the very altar before the holy God. And he placed it upon my mouth. And he said, behold, this has touched your lips and has taken away your lawlessness and has cleansed your sin. Now I'm not gonna try to describe what would happen if this was a physical event. We all know how sensitive the lips are, especially to temperature. There was a cauterizing. There with me. But notice the message that he is to send is a message of judgment. I don't know how many times this text has been used to raise up missionaries, send them out without actually then warning folks sometimes. Sometimes the message is one of judgment. There is no gospel that does not call for repentance. There is no gospel that does not talk about sin, that does not expose sin. You can't point someone to a savior when they have no idea what they need to be saved from. And Isaiah was sent to do something extremely uncomfortable, extremely unpopular. Hearing you will hear and yet not understand, seeing you will see but will not perceive. The heart of this people has grown thick and their ears are dull of hearing. Isaiah, I'm sending you to a people who've heard it all before. Many of them are religious. I think of Jeremiah standing for the people as they go into the temple. Don't trust in this place, they're religious. They're going to worship Yahweh. The hardest people in the world to reach, the hardest people in the world to preach to. And though we can't tell by looking at the original languages, people like to say, well, what is that? I love when people come up to me and they say, I always wondered about this verse. What does it mean in the original Hebrew? My normal response is the same thing it says in English. They're always very disappointed by that. They want some Gnostic revelation. I always thought it meant this. Nope, nope, English Bible got it right. But while we can't tell from the original languages, we can't hear the tone of voice. And I have to wonder if after God said they've closed their eyes, let's say see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and they turn back and I heal. This is very clearly a judgment text. I have to wonder, how did Isaiah say the next words? For how long, Lord? Or after hearing the message, was it for how long, Lord? I mean, can we be done with this by six? And notice God's response. Is you're gonna have to do this all the way through judgment. There's no vacation here, Isaiah. There's no short time span here. I am going to harden these people's hearts. You are going to proclaim a message of judgment and I am going to desolate the cities. And that's what I'm calling it. Until the cities are desolate for being uninhabited, the houses for there being no men. Because see, think about it. Once the inhabitants are driven out, what happens to cities? I guess there's a television program about what would happen like 1,000 years after we're gone and how stuff would fall apart and stuff. We look around major cities and stuff falls apart and we're here. It wouldn't take very long until it was falling apart if we weren't here. And the point is there's gonna be desolation of the land. And that's how long Isaiah is to deliver his message. So having looked at the text, I wanted to make some applications to us. In the context of seeking to bring God's truth in our modern context in a Western society that seems absolutely positively intent upon self-destruction. Hear me, my friends. Continuing in the direction we're going will destroy a culture. It will destroy a culture. There has never been a culture that has survived the things that we are bringing upon ourselves. Not just the approbation, the insane demand that we call good, that which God has called evil in homosexuality. Not only the destruction of the family, the home, marriage. But our society has gotten to the point where we now honestly have gotten to the depths of depravity to where we don't even believe there's a creator anymore. We are no longer even creatures. And it is the dogma of our society, not the opinion of our society. It is the dogma of our society that we have no creator. We have no transcendental purpose. We are merely the accidental result of impersonal universal forces. As a result, our society is far more rapidly than I ever thought, far more rapidly than I thought it could happen, running to its own destruction. What do we do in the midst of that? Well, I'm sure this had something to do with the founding of this ministry, but it's Jeremiah. Jeremiah, who, after experiencing tremendous opposition from the religious leaders of his day, fell into great despair. Cursed be the day I was born! And yet, it was in that very context that Jeremiah said, I would really rather not do this anymore, God. I'm done. But you've tricked me, because I have to. Your word, if I don't speak it, it becomes a fire in my bones. I can't get away from the calling you've placed on my life, so here I go! So if that's where you are, then what are you supposed to do? Well, let's remember a few things. First of all, remember who you represent. I have been doing ministry now for 27 years. I've been doing ministry longer now than I had been alive when I started. I don't have one of those super-duper testimonies, by the way. Actually, I think I have one of the best you could have. I didn't get saved out of anything, but a wonderful Christian home. At a very young age, I never did drugs, I didn't drink. I was a virgin when I got married. Isn't that unusual? And I think it's one of the best testimonies you could ever have. Yeah, you know that's right. And very early on, as a very young man, I made a decision that I was going to become a priest. My father is a minister, still is, still pastoring at 78 years of age. But I saw him so badly mistreated by Christians with so many knife wounds in his back that by the time I was 10 years old, the one thing I had said was, I'll never go into the ministry. I was one of those guys in junior high and high school you loved to hate. I never got a B. No, they weren't straight C's either. I never got a B, I never got a demerit, I was never late for class. Yeah, I was one of those guys. But one of the main reasons I was doing that is I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy. And my eyes weren't really good, and Air Force sort of likes to be able to see where you're going. So I knew that I would have to be absolutely exceptional to be able to get one of those appointments. And so I tried hard, accomplished a lot of things as a young person. Thankfully, as I said, raised in a Christian family, had a work ethic, so I was working by the time I was a teenager. But then the Lord got hold of my heart, got hold of me in a special way. And ever since that time, I understand what Jeremiah meant. There's a lot of things I could have done in this life. I'd be a good attorney, and I know I'd be a good attorney. I could make a lot of money. But I can't do that. And somewhere along the line, I can't tell you it was in some Isaiah-like revelation or vision, I became absolutely convinced that the God I was seeking to serve, the God whose truth I was seeking to vindicate in the public square, was the holy creator whose glory fills the whole earth. And when you are absolutely convinced, standing upon a sidewalk, standing in front of a room full of Muslims in London, as I have done fairly recently, even here in New York, some of you remember when I debated Imam Shamsi Ali, some of the brothers were with me, there was about 800 Muslims in that room, about 200 Christians. And some people would say, isn't that intimidating? 800 Muslims are not nearly as intimidating as the Lord of Hosts. And if you are absolutely convinced in your heart that no matter where you are, his eyes are on you, no matter where you are, you're doing what he's called you to do, how can you fear the face of man? And in those darkest hours, when God, I believe what my confession of faith says, it's right there in the hymnal in the pew you're sitting in, if you wanna open up to the back, you've got the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. I'm an elder in a Reformed Baptist church. That confession of faith tells me what Ephesians 1.11 tells me. That God's decree and purpose brings about whatever takes place in time. And I'm not standing up here as some seminary professor standing in the ivory tower that can say that flippantly. I've walked through the dark valleys just as all of you have. And I can say with absolute assurance that God always has a purpose for the suffering that enters into the lives of his servants. There is no purposeless evil. I don't believe in a God that would create a universe filled with purposeless evil. I may not know what all the reasons are, but I've learned to trust him who says he has all the reasons. If you recognize that God is absolutely holy, it will change you. It will change the way you preach the gospel. The gospel is not some self-help methodology. Jesus isn't something you add to your new diet and your teeth-whitening routine. And yet that's how he's being presented in many churches in our land today. If you know the holiness of God, you have a foundation upon which to understand the sinfulness of man. And once you understand the sinfulness of man and that the holy God has every right to bring any wrath that his just nature deems proper upon the sinner, then you'll have the answer to the person who says, how can God allow this? To which you should say, given that you are a sinner, deserving the wrath of God, a better question is, how could God ever allow you to have one scintilla of joy or happiness in this life? And then, understanding the holiness of God, therefore the depravity of man, God's justice in his wrath, then and only then, just as the book of Romans doesn't get to the good news until it's spent two and a half chapters on the bad news, then we can start understanding what God has done in Jesus Christ, the condescension of the creator to enter into his own creation. If that ever gets to the point where that does not amaze you, you better take a spiritual check as to where you are. If you can get comfortable with the idea that in eternity past before you were ever created, God set his love upon you and the triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, covenanted together to bring about their own glory through the redemption of a specific people in Christ Jesus and that absolutely undeservedly you were chosen to receive that grace. If that ever starts becoming blasé for you, that's dangerous. Our society's heard all about Jesus. Jesus died for our sins. But if they don't truly understand who God is, most of them have a vision of God as grandfather up in the sky. They don't see he is completely other. They don't see who he truly is. They have no basis for understanding what Christ has truly done in his sacrifice and what he has accomplished. My time is quickly vanishing away. Let me conclude with this. You do not want to go out upon the city streets of Brooklyn and share your opinion. That's not Christian ministry. That may be what seminaries are telling you to do these days, but that's not what the spirit of God equips men and women of God to do. You are ambassadors who stand in representation of this holy God. And the words you want to deliver are his and his alone. You don't want yourself inserted in there. You want his message and his message only. And what this text tells us is that God provides, he provided cleansing for Isaiah's lips before those lips then spoke the words of God. And he's provided cleansing for you. Isn't it our greatest possession, our greatest encouragement, that we can go before this thrice holy God and we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ? Very quickly, I told you I'd tell you this. Why did I read this from the Greek Septuagint? Please notice the verse, the end of verse one, and the house was full of his glory. The Hebrew says his robe filled the temple, but the Septuagint says the house was filled with his glory. Very, very quickly, you're gonna have to make this very fast because time is defeating me here. Turn with me please to the Gospel of John chapter 12. John chapter 12. And here we have in the section was just being discussed just a few moments ago. Notice verse 38. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah, the prophet which he spoke. Lord who has believed are reported. To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this reason they could not believe. For Isaiah said again, he has blinded their eyes, he hardened their hearts so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart and be converted, I heal them. These things Isaiah said because he saw his glory and he spoke of him. That's a quote from Isaiah six. And remember the readers of John would be reading the Greek Septuagint. In the Greek Septuagint, Isaiah says what? I saw the Lord and I saw his glory filling the house. Here's the fulfillment. These things Isaiah said because he saw his glory. Everyone reading it goes, ah, there's Isaiah six. And he spoke of him. Who is John identifying Jesus as? The very thrice holy Yahweh seated upon his throne who has entered into human flesh. That is who you represent. Let's pray together. Indeed, our triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we come before you and we thank you for your word and for the fact that your spirit comes and makes it alive in our hearts. We pray that we will understand we are indeed your ambassadors and that you will honor your word. You will give to us a measure of your spirit so that we might speak forth the gospel and that you in your great mercy and your condescension would make it to come alive in the hearts of men and women all to your honor and glory. You are holy. May we be holy as you are holy. We pray in Christ's name, amen. Amen. Thank you, Lord. Amen.