In this sermon, Gavin Beers speaks about the vision of God compelling our Christian service, using Isaiah's vision of God as an example. He emphasizes the need for the church to recover the vision of the glory of God in the 21st century, and explains how it will draw us to worship, compel our labor, keep us encouraged and faithful, encourage us to preach salvation, and keep us from pride.

Well, my name is Gavin Beers. I'm originally from Northern Ireland, now a pastor in North Carolina, not too far from here in American terms anyway. And what I want to share with you this afternoon really follows on the back of a number of things that the brothers have already mentioned. What Dr. Beekie shared is his passion will serve you and me and the wider church in pursuing what I want to share with you as what's burning in my soul.

Indeed, I wish it were burning more deeply than it is. It's also very much associated to what Mr. Washer was speaking about. And when he began, I thought, isn't that interesting? We are focusing upon the same thing, indeed the same text.

The issue is the vision of God compelling our Christian service. In the 1950s there was a Puritan conference started in England. Men like J. I. Packer, Martin Lloyd-Jones got together and they presented Puritan Reformed experiential preaching.

And then there was a division because Packer and others refused to come out of the Anglican church and Lloyd-Jones had a problem in conscience, continuing to fellowship with them. And so there was a parting of the ways for many years. And before Packer died, he was asked a question, who was the greatest preacher you ever heard? I don't particularly like the question, But I do like the answer. He said, that's easy.

Martin Lloyd-Jones, you could not have been present under his preaching and have a small view of God. I had a privilege of serving for 12 years in Scotland and an old retired minister served with me on my session throughout those years and He'd been brought up and knew Martin Lloyd-Jones, and he kept quietly encouraging me in my ministry, You need to preach the glory of God. You need to preach the glory of God.î I have another colleague in the ministry in Scotland, now over 80 years of age, and he speaks of his experience as a young man having been brought up in Methodism and then suddenly handing him Calvin's Institutes. And he said when he read them, he wept because he did not know that God was so glorious. Our culture has no consciousness of God.

Much of the wider church has very little consciousness of God. Everything's light. But even In Reformed, evangelical, confessional churches, we have lost the vision of God. That's why we don't settle down before worship. We're more interested in talking to the person beside us.

That's why we're taken up with the melody and we think we're having an experience, but we're not conscious of the God that we sing to. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and his train filled the temple. This vision compelled the prophet Isaiah's ministry. The chapter tells us when it happened in the year that King Uzziah died. After a long period of stable government, when everything was thrown into chaos, when there was an obvious threat from the north in the Assyrian Empire and many of the people in Israel were terribly unsettled and afraid.

Isaiah saw the Lord. We're told That he saw Jehovah enthroned as a kind of king and judge in his temple. And John 10 tells us, of course, that that was the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we're told what he heard, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The cry of angels who are perfectly holy themselves as created beings, yet when they consider the holy otherness and infinite purity of God who is light.

They veil their eyes, they cover their feet, and they cry, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy. That's the sense of the Hebrew. Repetitive, intense awareness of the holiness of God. The beginning of the prophet's ministry, because he's going to need this vision to continue in it. And when we see what's on the horizon as a culture, we need as the church to have this vision of God.

It will be the only thing that holds us. Well then Isaiah hears a voice, whom shall I send and who will go for us?" And when he responds to this cry, holy, holy, holy, he is undone and unclean. Mr. Washer described that this vision would pulverize a man. That's literally what's going on in Isaiah's experience.

The word means I cease, I disintegrate, I'm coming apart at the seams. And there he is undone and unclean, hearing this voice, whom shall I send and who will go for us? You think the last person in the room who's going to put up his hand is the man who says I am undone and I am unclean. But what else can he do? What else can He do?

He brings Himself to the feet of this glorious God and says, here am I, send me. The same vision that crushed him now constrains him. God says very well, I'll send you, but you need to know something about your mission. When you speak to people, they will not hear. In fact, verse 10, I'm going to use you to make them deaf.

I'm going to use you to make them blind. The fruit of your ministry is going to be hardening, blinding, deafening. Isaiah ask a very obvious question, how long is this going to go on for? And the Lord speaks about a remnant. He will preserve that remnant and call them to himself.

Well, as I said, I think this is something that we really need to catch a vision of in the 21st century. And when we do, it will help us in a number of ways. I want to leave six briefly with you. They'll be very brief. The first is it's going to draw you to worship.

All this lightness that pervades the modern church cannot exist with this vision of God. It should be nauseating to us. Light, informal, irreverent worship is a contradiction to the worship that this draws us to. The second thing is it will compel your labor because you are called to the task by the greatest of all kings, and you serve one who is absolutely worthy of all that you are. And there will be times in your Christian service in the home, if any of you are pastors, where this is the only thing that will hold you.

There are many other motives and the Lord presses those upon you, but He will take you to the place where the only thing that will keep you putting one foot in front of the other, because there is no encouragement anywhere else, is the vision of the glory of God. Thirdly, it will keep you encouraged. It will keep you encouraged. Oftentimes we desire fruit. We come together here and there are hundreds of people, hundreds of people, and it seems encouraging.

And then we all disperse to our own localities and many of our churches are small and we preach looking for fruit and fruit doesn't come. This vision enables you to embrace a negative ministry. God says, Isaiah, you're gonna go and people are gonna become deaf and blind and fat and stupid under your ministry. And Isaiah says, so be it, because the thing that compels me is not success, but your glory. It enables us to stay encouraged.

In fact, God is like the infinite shadow behind everything that we experience in this world. Any discouragement has this infinite shadow of the glory of God behind us that keeps us going forward. It will also help to keep you faithful. It will deal with your temptation to massage the message. It will enable you in a day where we are facing new things as a church, not new in the history of the church, but new to us, to say, you will need to prize the rights of Jesus Christ out of the hand of my dead body, because those rights are not mine to give you.

You'll have to say that to the church when it comes to worship. You'll have to say that to the civil magistrate when he invades the prerogatives of Christ. And men like Samuel Rutherford that we heard of earlier did this and many in church history because they had this vision of the glory of God. We'll also encourage you to preach salvation. God says to Isaiah go and you're going to make people blind and deaf and fat.

You're going to have a negative ministry. But it didn't stop him preaching the gospel. Of all the prophets in the Old Testament, he is the one people have called the fifth gospel. And he goes forth preaching. He was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. O everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. He's the one that predicts in Isaiah chapter 61, I rise and shine for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you and the Gentiles shall come to your light and the kings to the brightness of thy rising." Even though he knew he would have this negative ministry, he throws the doors of the gospel wide open at any opportunity he can and he beseeches men to come to the knowledge of Israel's Messiah. So we keep preaching the gospel because we're motivated by the glory of God and it will keep you from pride Because your Christian life and your Christian ministry is not about you. It's about Him.

You are the sinful man, undone, unclean, forgiven, and commissioned to serve this glorious God in the midst of a sinful world. We as the church need to recover that vision and keep it before us at all times compelled to Christian ministry and service by a vision of the glory of God. You