A vision of God's glory reveals one's own sinfulness, as seen in Isaiah's experience in Isaiah chapter 6. The sermon contrasts worldly attempts at purification with the profound awareness of sin that comes from encountering God's holiness, using examples like the woman in Simon's house and a coal miner's dusty appearance in sunlight. This encounter leads to a confession of sin and the realization that true cleansing comes from God, symbolized by the live coal from the altar, representing Christ's atoning sacrifice. Ultimately, seeing God's glory, especially in Jesus Christ, transforms priorities and inspires a lifelong commitment of service and gratitude.
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looking at this beautiful young woman and finding out who her father was, was really taken aback. He knew that some of the, and I speak very kindly this evening, that some of the Roman Catholic priests of the lower orders they had in the Dominican Republic, a mistress and a family. But he found out that the father of this young woman was the Archbishop of Santo Domingo. And for a young man brought up in the culture and in the religion of his time, this was very unsettling. It was all right to think that some of those lower down did not practice what they preached, that to find out one of the key leaders in that community also had a mistress and had a family who had been accepted into the culture and the society was a very serious stumbling block.
Those of you not familiar with Latin America and especially a way back years gone by, long before the story I'm telling you, they used to send the outcasts from the religious orders in Europe to the new world. There was a man, again, he was a religious leader in France and he murdered his father. What do you do with a minister who murders his father? You send them to the island of Hispaniola. and he became a member of the church and the hierarchy in the French colony of Haiti. So that was understood in some of the lower levels, but my friend was really shaken when he found out that one of the top leaders also lived that type of life.
After a while, he resumed his friendship with the young woman, and finally they decided they would marry, and they were married in Santo Domingo, but he practiced in the city of La Vega. Now, when he'd come back from his postgraduate studies in Chicago, he brought back with him a Bible. In those years, you wouldn't tell anybody that. I think I mentioned already only those who belonged to the hierarchy of the church could handle and read and teach the Bible. He just brought it back quietly and had it in his study, and he would read it from time to time. Then one day when he was out on his bicycle doing his visits to those who were ill, he passed by a vacant lot on the street called Sanchez, and he noticed they were digging a foundation.
And he just paused for a moment to look, and there was a foreigner there supervising the work. He wondered what this would be. So each day when he went out, he saw them pour the foundation, then to begin the work of the wooden construction. He remembered seeing them up in the rafters putting on the roof, and this foreigner was always there. And there was also a younger man, and he was a foreigner, and he wondered who they were and what they were doing in the city of Levegum. He made some inquiries and found out they were missionaries. For those of you with a long history in the Christian Brethren movement, the older man was Mr.
Arthur Peterkin, the pioneer worker from our churches to the Dominican Republic. The young man was Ian Rathy, not yet commended as a missionary, but serving as a tutor to the children of the Peterkins. And they were building the first chapel in the Dominican Republic. He thought to himself, well, they'll get the poor people. but they certainly will not reach any of the middle class or higher class people. They will never go into a Protestant church building. But he seated reading in the Bible and he came across that phrase where you read, and the poor gladly heard him.
And that made him think for a few moments that when the Lord Jesus was here, precisely the poor people were those who listened to him and learned from his teachings. He wondered about questions he had about the Bible and how he could perhaps approach this man without going into the church building and asking him one or two questions. But, of course, in a community like that, you can't do anything without everybody knowing what you're doing. And he looked and looked for the opportune moment when he might be able to meet him, even on the street, he wouldn't go to the house.
and maybe ask him a question or two. And one day, sure enough, walking down the street, he met Mr. Peterkin. He didn't even know his name. And they just looked at each other and nodded, and a few words were exchanged. And the man said, the young doctor said to Mr. Peterkin, I would like to ask you a question about the Bible. Well, Mr. Peterkin said, come along to the service. I'll be glad to help you with any difficulty you had. Oh, no, I can't do that. And then he said, well, could you come to my home? He said, I'd rather not do that either. And Mr.
Peterkin looked at this man and wondered what type of suggestion he would make to him. But he stood there and he really wanted to ask some questions. And Mr. Peterkin made a suggestion to him. And I'll tell you about that tomorrow night. We began Sunday evening with a meditation on a vision of God, and our biblical foundation was found in Isaiah chapter six. I noticed recently in the newspaper, as we began to enter into this new age, this new millennium, this new century, that there was a news report that down in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, three and a half million people gathered on the beach on December the thirty-first.
The weather would be favorable. They were there, most of them, to honor an African goddess of the water, and they did so by throwing into the sea flowers and jewelry, perfume and champagne. And many of them took off their shoes, and if they wore socks, took off their socks, and they stood in the surf, believing that the goddess would cleanse them from their sins and purify their soul. I don't mean to be disrespectful this evening. But surely the question of sin and our shortcomings before God is something more serious than walking a foot or two into the water or throwing some trinkets into the sea.
You cannot have a vision of God without becoming acutely aware of your own sinfulness, and that is the message of Isaiah chapter six. If you turn to the portion, we're going to read tonight again from verse one. Isaiah chapter six and verse one. 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. Above it stood seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face. With two he covered his feet. And with two he flew.
And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of its glory. And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am 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 one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.
And he touched my mouth with it, and said, Behold, this has touched your lips. your iniquity is taken away and your sin is purged. We trust that God will add His blessing to this beautiful portion of His Word. And when you have a vision of God, let me ask the question tonight, what kind of God do we believe in? If you believe that you know Him, that you walk with Him, I respectfully ask the question, what kind of a God do you believe in? Well, here you have this man, a young man, and he has a vision of the Lord, and immediately he is acutely aware of his own shortcomings.
Let me read the words again. Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am 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. Now, Isaiah knew what the temple was usually like. I'm sure he would go there regularly for religious exercises. It would be filled with ceremonies, rituals, and offerings. He would see it over and over again. The question that I think I would like to ask Isaiah is this question.
Isaiah, at that time, prior to the vision, do you believe that God was in his house or was he absent? I think after the vision, he would quickly acknowledge he was not in the house before. For in the vision, he saw the temple of the Lord the way it should be. and the glory of God was there. There were the chance of worship and adoration. And there was the sense of that unworthiness in the presence of God. There was no doubt in the vision God was present there. And when He is present, that gives meaning to the rituals and the ceremonies and the offerings.
If He's not there, It's like a machine that goes through its regular actions, but there's nothing spiritual about it. Now, Paul picks up that theme in his writings to the Corinthians, and you'll be familiar with the portion. Let me read it to you. Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. Now one disadvantage with the English language is that sometimes it's difficult to know whether the you is plural or singular.
There are occasions when Paul uses it in the singular sense. There are times when he refers to our bodies. as temples of the Holy Spirit. But in this case, the U is plural. Any Latin-based language will help you in that or a superficial knowledge of the Greek language. We're talking about a congregation. Paul is thinking of the church in Corinth, and he is very dogmatic, especially at the end, for the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. But he's already told us that that temple can be defiled.
And when I think about that today in our own situation, and I'm not trying to be overly critical, I don't know where you come from. I don't even know what your home church is. But all of us periodically should raise the question, how can the temple of God be defiled? How can the local church get into such a situation that God is no longer comfortable in that home. Well, a number of answers can be given if God is not there. Of course, it's already defiled. It can also be filled with empty ceremonies. That will defile it.
And by giving place to those things that are not consistent with His character, that will defile that holy temple. On the other hand, when God is present, then you're going to sense the beauty of holiness. You're going to understand what it is to experience the joy of heaven, the ceremonies, and the rituals, and there's nothing wrong with them. They will display the character of God if God is present. Now, I think the young man Isaiah, after the vision, goes back and remembers. It wasn't like that. God was not in his temple.
It was just filled with emptiness and a lot of activities. When he had the vision, he knew what the temple of God should be like. So I think with that background, now standing in the presence of God, he comes forth with these words. Let me give it to you in contemporary language. My doom is sealed. That's his conviction. And secondly, I am a foul-mouthed sinner. That's his confession. But that only happened when he had a look into the presence of God and saw the glory of God as it filled that temple in the vision that he received.
Let me put it down in more down-to-earth terms. Most of you read Missions, and you're going to read in the next month or two a short story I've written about a lady in the Dominican Republic. She was born of a prostitute, and she followed her mother into the same profession. One Saturday, she was on the way to the store, which was just on the edge of the dilapidated neighborhood in which she lived. And she literally bumped into another lady, almost knocked her over. And they straightened up and looked at each other. There wasn't any confrontation. There were words of apology. Very little conversation.
And that young woman looked into the face of a mature Christian woman. She couldn't explain what happened. Not until many years later did she understand. She had a glimpse of the holiness of God. in a Christian woman. She had never seen anything like it. And she parted from that lady with a very deep understanding there is something drastically missing in my life. So you don't have to be in a temple. You don't have to be in a chapel. There are Christian people we know.
And to move into their presence, you sense the beauty of holiness. You know the joy of heaven is filling their hearts. You know you've moved into the presence of God. Well, Isaiah in the vision, he had that beautiful experience. Sometimes we live so much in the secular world, in the world of darkness, we don't really know what's wrong. My brother Bob and I, we were just young, I think maybe ten or twelve years of age. And my dad sent us to spend the Easter holidays over in Cumberland on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. His brother John was there, my uncle John, and he was in charge of a coal mine.
And we went and spent the holidays with my uncle and my aunt. My uncle came from Scotland, one of those rather gruff men. And he said to me one day early in the morning, do you want to go down in the mine? Oh, I said, that would be wonderful. And I talked to my brother Bob. We were ready to go. And so off we went with him, marched down the street to the pit head and got on to the lift. And we stood there with all the miners. Now, if you've been down in the mine, you understand this. It's not like an elevator in a high-rise building. When that lift drops, it drops. And you basically float in mid-air.
We both grabbed my uncle by. the hand and we hung on for a dear life and then when it stops it does so so quickly you think you're going to go right through the floor we're down in the pit we had on the hats and the lights the whole thing and we spent about three hours there never seen anything like it watch where the men worked and the horses that draw the little carts with the coal it was a great experience about three o'clock we came back up And it was bright, sunny, beautiful afternoon. And we walked off of the lift. And I looked at my brother Bob and I began to laugh. And he looked at me and he laughed.
And we realized we were both covered with the cold dust of the mine. Our shirts were stained, our hands and faces. We didn't know that down in the pits. It wasn't until we came into the brightness of the sun that it was all made visible. And the Lord Jesus said, men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. But when you move into the glory of God, then you have an accurate view of your own life and your own position before God. And believe me, sometimes it can be a very disturbing thing.
A vision of God then brings you acutely aware of your own sin. And here's this young man broken. He's telling us, my doom is sealed. I'm nothing but a foul-mouthed sinner. And then all of a sudden, one of the seraphim comes to him, and he brings a live coal from the altar. And you read, And he touched my mouth with it, and said, Behold, this has touched your lips. Your iniquity has taken away, and your sin purged. Now, I've got to pause there.
When you're in the presence of God, as this young man was in this vision of God and of His majesty and glory, you're going to see right into the heart of God, right into the character of God. And immediately God deals with the problem of the young man. He's not left hanging in the air. He's not left for a long time fretting about his condition. He recognized it. And along comes this great celestial being flying to him with a live coal from off the altar. And the good news that his sin had been taken away.
It had been purged. Now quickly I want to say, don't try and visualize this. We all know that if a live coal from the altar was to touch anyone's lips, that person would be disfigured for life. So we ought not to try and visualize this. This is symbolism. And when you think about it, it's very graphic because the message is vital. There's no other solution to the young man's problem. Now let's go back to his confession because His confession is personal, but it also takes in his community. Listen again, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am 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. Lips. Unclean lips? Well, lips, we speak with our lips. It reveals what we are. And I don't think in this case, for one moment, this means that Isaiah was the young man who regularly used filthy language, blasphemous speech. I don't believe that. I think we know enough about the young man to realize he had a religious background. Whatever the condition of his heart, he did not walk around blaspheming the name of God.
nor would he use gutter language in his usual conversation. Why then does he use this strong language about a man of unclean lips and in the midst of a people of unclean lips? Well, the framework is of the temple of God and the glory of God in the temple. And in view of that, I'm going to suggest to you that he realized All those religious exercises, all those things we've been doing day after day, in them there was no personal conviction. It was simply doing what you were expected to do.
You went and you mumbled your prayers, or you listened to the priest as he prayed and you said amen, and you left and you went around your ordinary activities. Your heart was not in it. Your convictions were not behind it. And in that sense, all that you were professing with your lips in the presence of God was unclean. It was unworthy. I came across these words from a man called Anthony Bloom. He was a Russian-born Orthodox monk who became a bishop and a spiritual teacher of his people. And he wrote these words, It is not the constant thought of their sins.
but division of the holiness of God that makes the saints aware of their own sinfulness. Many people know there are things wrong with their life, but you don't understand the dimensions of what is wrong until you stand in the presence of God. It's His holiness that makes you so acutely aware of what is wrong. Well, in His situation, along come one of the seraphim, and they bring a live coal from the altar, a live coal, not a dead coal. It's a live coal because it comes with all the significance of the altar.
Now, the altar is the place where you deal with sin. Most of you know the Old Testament, and so often you have a person come and he brings his lamb or his ox, or maybe it could be a little turtle dove, Some offering is brought to the temple. Let's take for granted it is a lamb. You bring it for yourself and your family. You bring it right into the main altar of sacrifice. The priests are there. They will oversee this, but there are scholars who believe that you must place the animal on the altar and you place your hand on its head and you take the knife and you kill the animal.
Now for those of us in our sophisticated society today, it's almost repulsive to think about that. But please remember that by doing that, it becomes a very personal thing. The man is recognizing this innocent animal is taking my place and he's dying in my stead. And it really comes home when your hand is on the head, and the other hand holds the knife. Well, you remember with that background, John is down at the River Jordan. He's with his disciples. People are coming out of Jerusalem and all the villages of Judea, and they're coming down to be baptized publicly.
And they're saying by that baptism, we have failed God. We are not right with God. And they recognize it in that baptismal rite. So they're baptizing. I can see John lift his head and dunk the hillside as coming the Lord Jesus. And possibly he would point to him. And he said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes or bears away the sin of the world. This is the one who goes to the authentic altar. And at Calvary he dies for our sins. Now in symbolism, this is the message of Isaiah six.
A live coal is brought to touch this man. His iniquity is forgiven and his sin is purged. You remember the woman who stood behind the Lord Jesus. Everyone was indignant because she was in that home at that particular time. And as she was there... The only person who had time to speak to her was the Lord Jesus. And he spoke to her. And there was great indignation in that home because of her presence. And there was amazement that the Lord Jesus would take time to speak to a person like that. But he did.
And when he finished, he said to her, Your sins are forgiven. And they murmured among themselves, Who is this? who even forgive sins. They did not know who the Lord Jesus was, but they did know that forgiveness is the prerogative of God. And the Lord Jesus, who came into our world, the Word that was made flesh, He had the authority and the power to forgive her her sins. It's a very serious thing, the matter of the forgiveness of our sins. We ought never to take that lightly. When your sins have been forgiven, it means that somebody carried that load for you.
Let me take you back in your mind to Isaiah fifty-three. We almost know it by memory. Listen now to the verbs as I highlight them. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. And then you read, the chastisement for our peace was upon him. And then again you read, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. And then farther down, for he shall bear their iniquities. And right at the end of the chapter, and he bore the sin of many.
You take all those verbs together, and you realize when the Lord Jesus went to the cross, He carried an enormous burden that goes beyond our understanding. John says, the Baptist, Behold the Lamb of God who takes or bears away the sin of the world. And then John the Apostle says of Jesus Christ the righteous, He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but for those of the whole world. It staggers the imagination, but He bore that load for us. And because of that, you can enter into the beauty of forgiveness and know that between you and God there is no longer any barrier.
I wonder if some of you this summer will make your way over to Germany, to Omar Amagam, where they celebrate every ten years the Passion Plague. If you're going over there for the first time, it'll be quite an experience. If you've gone before, you'll remember that over four hundred years ago, the plague was ravishing Europe, and it was coming closer and closer to Omar Amagam, and they decided the town authorities will shut the gates. Nobody in, nobody out, and will keep the plague out. And so they did. No one could get in and no one could get out. But there was a man who was away on business and he came back and he banged at the gate.
They wouldn't let him in. He went to another gate and banged and they would not let him in. But he was born and brought up there. He knew how to get into the city without going through a gate. And he entered the city and he brought the plague. And people began to die. And then the town fathers startled. They did something that was quite common in those years. They made a vote to God. If God will spare our village, we will celebrate from now on every ten years a passion play. Well, many died, but the village survived and they began. And this year, the year two thousand, once again, they'll celebrate the passion play.
And people will come from around the world to Omar Amiga to watch it. It takes about six hours. There's a break for lunch. I wasn't too sure about this when I went in nineteen-ninety. Never been to anything like that. And when you walk in the door, they give you a little book with a translation for it's all in German. But of course, if you know the Bible, you don't need the translation. But I opened it up. And on the first page I read, For God so loved the world that He gave His own. They won my heart. About eighty years ago, in Omar Amiga, and all the players and all the singers come from the village.
And that time they asked a man by the name of Mr. Arthur Lang, a local businessman, his store is still in on the main street in Omar Amiga. They asked him to play the part of the Christ. He was standing behind the stage, just waiting for his cue to come on bearing the cross on the way to execution. And as he stood there, right at his feet was the cross on the floor. He patiently waited, and a young stage hand came along and saw the cross and instinctively bowed down and put his hands on it to raise it up.
He raised it about three or four inches and it was so heavy, he dropped it with a thud. And he stood up and he said, Mr. Lang, why is the cross so heavy? And Mr. Lang answered and he said, young man, if I did not feel the weight of the cross, I could not play the part of the Christ. Now we're not actors and we're not in a drama. But the sweetness of forgiveness, I would suggest, is linked in some measure to your understanding of the weight of your sin that the Lord Jesus carried when he went to the cross of Calvary.
That live call from the altar, Isaiah knew all about the altar. He knew what it represented. The fullness of its significance was brought right over and touched his life. It changed him. His iniquity was forgiven and he had been purged from his sin. One other thing we should notice this evening is that the glory of God that he saw is not something that we're likely to see in the same way in our lifetime. Not likely we're going to have a vision of the old temple filled with the glory of God. So where do we see his glory today?
I'm going to suggest to you that that glory is seen exclusively in its beauty and its perfection on the face of Jesus Christ. And I wouldn't change places with Isaiah for anything. Oh, it must have been a spectacular vision. It would last for an instant, a few moments, and it was gone. But it's Paul who tells us about the light of the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Jesus Christ. And it's when you know Him and you walk in fellowship with Him that you enter more and more into the wonder of God's character because character is linked to glory and glory is linked to weight.
We used to talk in years gone by about a man's weight and we weren't talking about pounds. We were talking about His character. And if it was a good character, the man had a sense of glory in his life. But when you know the Lord Jesus and you see Him and you look on Him, you're going to move right into the character of God. Isaiah, in His way, He saw the vision. He received the blessing of the altar. We look at the glory of God today in the person of the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus is the perfect expression of the supreme beauty of God's incomparable love, of His unimaginable grace, and of His exceedingly rich mercy.
Now that's Bible language. I'd like to try and define it in ways that maybe we could understand more fully. You take the subject of love, God's love. We know there's no other love like God's love, but how can you describe it? Well, I thought this afternoon, this woman that came into Simon's house, the Lord Jesus stunned the men in Simon's house when he took time to talk with that morally devastated woman, and then when he filled her heart with the joy of forgiveness. They'd never seen anything like that.
Please remember, in that room would be men who regularly violated that woman physically. If they met her on the street, they wouldn't give her the time of day. They would simply ignore her. Now here's the Lord Jesus, and he takes time, and he talks to this woman. There's conversation. And then I would like to have been there to see the look on her face when he said to her, Your sins are forgiven. And she entered into the wonder of that joy that comes through the forgiveness of sin. The world had never seen anything like it. Our world today knows nothing of that type of love.
Then you think about His grace. Notice it, the Lord Jesus, without addressing one word to the centurion who was responsible for our Lord's crucifixion. He spoke to Him powerfully. And how did He do it? He brought a condemned criminal back to God in the last moments of His life. And then the grace comes in with a flood. He opened the door to the glory of that eternal paradise. No wonder the centurion said out loud, certainly this was a righteous man.
Or as Mark says, This truly was the Son of God. He'd never seen anything like that. To see him speak to that man, to see him bring him back to God, and then to give him the promise of eternal glory, a condemned criminal. This man was absolutely staggered. And then mercy. I don't know again how you define mercy. But I know that the Lord Jesus startled his enemies, and he startled his friends. And I would even suggest that he astounded the celestial beings in heaven.
When on the cross, he said in that prayer to the Father, Father, forgive them, for they don't really know what they are doing. Mercy had never been seen in that form before, but you see it when you look at the face of the Lord Jesus. And when you look at Him, you move right into the character of God. We close our meditation this evening with a practical thought. How is it going to affect us in our lives? Surely we're not stagnant or static. We want to grow. We want to know more of God. And we want to know more of God through His Son, the Lord Jesus.
Well, a glimpse of His glory, and I trust there are many of them through our lives as we study the Scriptures. Listen to the exposition of the Word of God. Talk to our Christian friends. Whenever you have a glimpse of the glory of God, you have to evaluate again, afresh your priorities. Are you living according to the principles of this world, or are you living according to the principles that come from the heart of God? That is, are you linked to this unstable, temporal, changing world order devoid of any values, or are you living in the wonder of that new order that comes from God, the enduring, stable, unchanging world of eternal values?
Isaiah saw the glory of the Lord. He was never the same again. You're going to find right through his prophecy over and over the elements of the vision. They keep bursting out. It wasn't just something that happened in past. It was something that remained with him through his long and exceptional ministry. He had seen the Lord and he lived for him fully the rest of his life. What will it mean about holiness? We can all become careless. I can become careless. I went into the church building in Porta Plata many years ago. This same lady I've mentioned, and you'll see the story in Missions Magazine, by this time she was a Christian baptized, a beautiful Christian woman.
Grace and I came in early to the chapel for the communion service that morning, and she was seated away at the back, the last bench. I thought that was unusual because she usually sat up near the front. But I went and sat down with grace. And then I remember just before the hour when the service was to begin, I turned around and she was still back there. So I got up and I went over and sat down beside her. And I noticed that she was crying. So I took her by the hand. She was a mature lady. And I loved her much in the Lord. And I said, What is wrong this morning? Well, she said, Mr.
Cochran, this week a neighbor provoked me, and I said something I ought not to have said. And she said, I'm not worthy this morning to come and remember the Lord. And as I just quietly listened to her, I thought, when was the last time I ever had any dealings with anyone? Whoever thought that because of things they had done wrong during the week, they ought not to come and remember the Lord. I spoke to her and I said, Remember, Donya Camila, you read in the Bible, If we confess our sins, He is righteous and just to forgive us all our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
I had a moment of prayer with her and I said, I think you should go and take your place. And I went back and sat down by grace. And I saw her come down quietly and sit in her usual place. But I haven't met many people who are so acutely aware of the holiness of God and the things that can offend God. She was an outstanding Christian woman, and I thought I would like to be more sensitive to God's holiness than I am. Well, you will be when you grow in the knowledge of God as you see His glory on the face of the Lord Jesus. And when you're in His presence, you'll enjoy not just that initial sense of forgiveness, but every day there'll be that fresh wonder that in spite of all that we are, He loves us and He forgives us.
And our thank you to God can be nothing less than a whole lifetime of service and dedication to him. I take that from Isaiah. To the best of our knowledge, this young man, when he saw the glory of God, he made that lifelong commitment. We're going to deal with it later on in the week, and his whole life was spent in the service of God. We talk about the service of God. You don't have to be a missionary or a preacher or a teacher. Everyone here tonight is a servant of the Lord. and a life that is lived for God's glory is one great thank you to God.
Isaiah lived that type of life, and we can do that in God's grace also. Let's take our hymn book, and we're going to sing verse or two of hymn number twelve in our hymn book, When all thy mercies, oh my God, my rising soul surveys, transported with the view, I'm lost in wonder, love and praise. I'm going to suggest that we stand and we sing the first and the last two verses of hymn number twelve. Verse one, four and five. To him who is the blessed and only potentate, the king of kings and lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in an approachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power for ever and ever.