Shift, Part 5: Shift Your Paradigm Series

Note: I am indebted to Sermon Central contributor David Ward for much of this sermon. I made some modifications to fit better with the SHIFT series, and to talk about our current crises with the Covid19 pandemic, but otherwise this is David’s work, and I am very thankful for it.

Good morning! Please open your Bibles to Isaiah 6. We are concluding our series called SHIFT this morning. For the past several weeks, we’ve been talking about mindsets in our church and in our individual lives may need to shift in order for us to be the people God wants us to be. We’ve talked about shifting our attitudes, our actions, and our priorities. But the one we’re going to talk about this morning may be the most important one of all. This morning we are going to talk about a paradigm shift.

Now, some of you may not know what it means to have a paradigm shift. “Paradigm” is a weird looking word, but it’s really pretty simple. A paradigm is simply a specific way of looking at the world. It is a set of presuppositions, laws, theories, philosophies that shape your understanding of the world. The world is round. It spins on its axis once every 24 hours. It revolves around the sun once every 365 days. The moon revolves around the earth once every 28 days. Put all these facts together and they form our paradigm for understanding time, seasons, gravity, the ocean and hundreds of other things about life that we don’t even have to think about anymore because our paradigm is stable.

But what happens when our paradigm shifts? When everything we think we know turns out to be wrong?

There is a great scene in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, when world-class paleontologist Allen Grant, who has devoted his life to the study of dinosaurs, suddenly comes face-to-face with real, live prehistoric creatures. Let’s watch what happens: [Show clip]

It is one thing to piece together an image of dinosaurs by picking through fossils and bones. But when he encountered an actual, living, breathing dinosaur, his paradigm shifted. Everything he thought he understood changed.

For many people, spirituality amounts to picking through the artifacts of faith that survive from long ago and far away. We read the stories in the Bible about people encountering God hearing His voice, experiencing his awesome, at times terrible, power. But what if God showed up in our world today? How would it effect you to have a close encounter with God? A God who isn’t an illusion or a pipe dream, but who is real enough to see? How would it affect you to see God for who He really is?

Isaiah chapter 6 gives us just such an encounter. Let’s read this together, and then we will break it down verse by verse. If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word:

6 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!”[b]

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for 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!”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You can be seated.

Pray…

Now, just to set the stage, let me take you back in time to the kingdom of Judah in 740 BC. Israel is doing well economically. Building projects are happening, business is booming, and people are prospering. Militarily, Israel is strong, but they are also at peace. It was a time of military peace and economic prosperity.

So now imagine that Isaiah gets up one morning, he’s drinking his coffee, eating a bagel, and he flips on CNN (that’s Canaan News Network), and there’s breaking news: “KING UZZIAH HAS DIED.” Isaiah’s mouth hung open in disbelief. King Uzziah had ruled for 52 years over Judah. He was one of the better kings of Judah—he did right in the eyes of the Lord. Uzziah was credited with all this economic and military success Israel was enjoying. But now, the king had died.