ASI Southwest 2023: Here I Am, Send Me

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ASI Southwest

David Shin

Go Ye, Go Me

Our Father in heaven, thank you so much for the Sabbath.

What a wonderful day it has been, a reminder of creation and redemption, that we can rest in the assurance that even as you made a day holy, you can make us holy.

And we can rest in that assurance, that reminder every 7 days.

And tonight we pray for your Holy Spirit to attend us.

Lord, you know my humanity and my weakness.

I pray for your robe of righteousness to especially make up for my deficiency tonight and cover me.

May the Holy Spirit inspire and instruct tonight in Jesus' name.

This evening I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 6.

I appreciate Pastor Stephen Boer's reflection on this, and I want to revisit this passage this evening as we segue into our theme, Here Am I, Send Me.

Isaiah chapter 6, I want to do a few observations before we go to our next passage this evening.

Isaiah chapter 6, in verse 1, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

And 1 cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke." A few observations about the passages I've just read.

1 of them is that Bible scholars believe that the holy, holy, holy, that the angels cry out could be an allusion to the Godhead, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

He's able to look into the very Shekinah glory of God and these angels, seraphim, are covering the presence of God.

And afterwards is the universal reaction of anyone that has seen God in verse 5, and so I said, "'Woe is me, for I'm 1 undone.'" Now if you go to the chapter prior to this, the phrase or the word woe is prevalent in chapter 5.

So let's pick it up in chapter 5 verse 8.

Isaiah says, Woe to those who join house to house.

Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may follow intoxicating drink.

Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of vanity.

5 verse 21 and 22, woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight.

Verse 22, woe to mighty men at drinking wine, Woe to men valiant for mixing intoxicating drink!' So the preamble to Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah says, "'Woe to that brother!

Woe to that individual!' And then he sees God and is like, woe is me.

When you baptize someone into the church, I think the Lord kind of puts rose-colored glasses on by his grace, and then those things start to get a little bit dim as they recognize that God's church, we've got some issues.

They start looking at the foibles and the idiosyncrasies and the challenges of other people, and it's easy to have relative righteousness.

Like, I'm vegetarian and I fast once a week.

You look at that person and you're like, woo, dress reform, gotta pray for that brother.

Oh man, but I don't have that I praise God.

I'm not like other men Relative righteousness.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have health reform, but I don't believe in righteousness by veganism Amen It's a fruit We do it because we love Jesus, but it doesn't have merit.

And so, it's easy to look around and be like, hey, I feel pretty good, until you look at Jesus.

And then, there's a beautiful tension here, because there's a healthy sense of our unworthiness.

You never want to make self the focus, but Jesus is the focus, and as we're making Jesus the focus, there's a tension in that focus on Jesus, there's a healthy sense of who we really are.

And then we can look at others that aren't vegan and be like, hey, Everybody's on their walk and their journey, and you can have grace, and you can be gracious to other individuals.

We never wanna go around like we're baptized in lemon juice.

Isaiah, woe, woe, woe, sees God, woe is me.

Woe is me, for I'm undone, because I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

Then 1 of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal, which he had taken with a tong from the altar, and he touched my mouth with it, and he said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is purged." This is justification.

He sees God in his glory, senses his need, is justified.

As you know, the story doesn't end there.

He just doesn't sit around and celebrate and eat his haystacks and veggie links and sing kumbaya, although I love those things every once in a while.

He doesn't just have community, although I love community.

He doesn't just form a club and establish this little enclave of individuals that are justified and standing around theologizing and philosophizing about the nuances of that, although I enjoy that.

As you well know, verse 8, And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?

Notice us, third person, pronoun, plural.

This is a conversation within the Trinity.

Isn't that as though they went to Isaiah and said, like, you go, At least in this passage, there's a conversation within the community of the Godhead.

Hey, you know, Isaiah's had this experience, and then he hears a conversation within the inner sanctum of the Trinity.

Whom shall I send, And who's going to go for us?

I was born in Washington Adventist Hospital in Tacoma Park, Maryland, right next to what was back then Columbia Union College, now Washington Adventist University.

And I went to John Nevins Andrews School, lived right there, Erie Avenue, right off of Flower.

And from there, if that wasn't enough, we moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, close to the General Conference.

And if that wasn't enough, we moved to Hagerstown, Maryland.

I see some people from Hagerstown represent over there.

Went to Hagerstown, Maryland, next to the Review and Herald.

I lived right across the street from Mount Etna Camp and attended Highland View Academy for a couple years.

When I, after I went to the seminary, was hired by the Michigan Conference because I was a single pastor that was in ordination track and the ministerial director had pity on me and didn't send me off to Escanaba to die in oblivion, single, sent me to Berrien Springs to be a youth pastor at the 1, 000-member village church in order to find a wife.

Another Adventist community right next to Andrews University.

So I'm very familiar with Adventist communities.

And look, I praise God for them, And there's a huge blessing.

Because look, if you're just receiving and never giving, There's a body of water out in the Middle East that's always receiving but has no outlet.

So I'm not saying you can't have that experience in those Adventist community, but it's very easy to become comfortable.

Because if you're never intentionally, proactively engaged in outreach, and there's plenty of opportunities there, but if you're not careful, you can get into a consumerist mentality.

When I pastored in Berrien Springs, there were people that would just go around to the latest and the greatest thing happening in town, and you could go through 10 years in Berrien Springs and miss every single communion.

Because when they're having communion in 1 church, you go to another 1.

And so this is the element that we really have to struggle with, whether you're in an Adventist community or whether you're in a big church or a small church.

If you just get comfortable, there's something that happens to our Christian experience.

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Go Ye, Go Me

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