Brokenness

What is going on here?

Isaiah, as a man, has been broken. Perhaps he had been relying upon his own strength, his own rectitude, ’one up’ but now he sees himself brought down to their level. And this is a fundamental process in anyone who is going to undertake any work for God. First of all, that person has to be broken. That’s the point I really want to come to tonight, this matter of broken-ness. That we have to be broken as people before God. I don’t think God was giving Isaiah just a nice experience, just something to enjoy. Isaiah was feeling thoroughly wretched. He probably wished, in a way, that it would all end.

But God doesn’t just break us down and then leave us there. He didn’t do that to Isaiah, for we read in verses 6 and 7 of Isaiah being cleansed. The seraph flies to him with a live coal, touches Isaiah’s lips, saying see this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.

God breaks down, but then he builds up, and builds up in a new way with sin atoned for, with that wonderful assurance in the place of the weight of our sin, of its weight being lifted. If you read the history of revival time and again it begins with this devastating experience of God’s holiness, this weight of God’s glory, but then the wonderful liberation of forgiveness. God only breaks down to build up.

Isaiah has been built up in this new way, almost, as it were, reconstructed. He is a fit vessel now for God to speak to the nation, in a much more specific way. So Isaiah hears the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us?. And Isaiah replies Here am I, send me.

God’s work can only be undertaken because God sends us. We don’t send ourselves. Any Christian work to have any value is done because God has appointed us, because he has equipped. Before this can begin we have to be brought to the end of ourselves, so that God can build us up in his way.

God grant that if we have not yet come to the end of ourselves, yet been broken down, are not aware of his glory and holiness, that he may do so. May he break us down, build us up, so we can be fit vessels for the work of his Kingdom.