Responding to Holiness (Part 3): Departing for the Hard Places

Note: I will only be dealing with Isaiah in this last blog because it is a lengthy entry. However, I encourage you to read Ezekiel and you will see a nearly step by step correspondence to Isaiah's call. Also, as the blog progesses, you will not that I have applied it mostly to men. For one I am a man. Two, there is similar application for women (as they teach other women) even though I address men. Three, my reason for addressing men is that Isaiah and Ezekiel's ministry has to do with the public ministry of the word of God. Being a complementarian, I believe that the public ministry of God's word is reserved for men only by the explicit command of God's word (1 Tim 2 and Titus). In fact if there is one area where men and women, day after day are falling into the spirit of the age and the spirit of the culture (i.e. worldliness) it is over this issue. Fourth and finally, I notice in my own heart the temptation to be timid and almost ashamed of God's words when others don't like it. And I want to exhort preachers and my fellow would be preachers to courage in proclaiming the scriptures.

Though I have only written three parts with regard to a proper response to holiness, this will be my final post on this matter. The truth is that one could write book upon book on this subject. So far we have walked through issues like conviction and wonder; atonement and hearing God. But does our response to holiness stop here? Do we merely feel conviction, then experience atonement and continue to live our lives unchanged? Or does this sense of wonder and a hearing of God's voice change us? Does it change our life? Perhaps our career? Maybe even the place that we intend to live? I think it is abundanly plain that once we have let God do his cleansing work in us (atonement) that we ought to rightly respond to him. Once of the clearest ways that we can do that is by going to minister in hard places. Now, what do I mean by hard places? I see "hard places" as filling a broad range of ministerial posts (both lay and "professional"). For both Isaiah and Ezekiel, it meant most nearly, preaching to a people who would not listen to them. God explicitly tells them both that they will go to people who have no interest in hearing what they have to say, even though they speak the words of God. Let's take a look at both of their circumstnaces.
Let's start with Isaiah 6:8-13. Notice the grace of God in using fallen Isaiah to bring his message to the people. Verses prior, acknowledged his own sinfulness, then God atoned for his sins. Once this transaction has been completed, Isaiah is ready to go. Or more accurately, he is compelled to go. When God asks who he will send, Isaiah cries out, "Here am I! Send me." And God does not object despite Isaiah's sinfulness. He has been atoned for and so God sends him forth. Imagine the excitement for Isaiah as God says, "Go" (v.9). Yet I can only imagine that the excitement would be short lived as God continues to speak. Immediately after telling him to go, God tells Isaiah to tell the people:

Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their eyes heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."

Can you imagine the emotions that Isaiah must have expereinced? "God, you want me to go tell your people that you will blind their eyes and make their hearts heavy? God is this real? Am I hearing you correctly?" I could only imagine that I might respond in a similar fahsion. The state of Isaiah's apparent confusion is evident when he cries out, "How long, O Lord" (v.11)? "How long will this last God? How long will I speak to a people and tell them that they cannot understand? The crushing asnwer comes from God:

Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land in a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a ten remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stemp remains when it is felled."

We know from salvation history that this would mean the entirety of Isaiah's lifetime and into the life of Christ in the NT. In other words, Isaiah will spend his WHOLE life speaking to God's people who will not listen to him. They will deride him, they will mock him, they will hate him and most importantly they will not listen to God's words through him. I doubt this is what Isaiah had in mind when he said, "Here am I! Send me."
This is not just Isaiah's life in ministry, this is all of God's ministers life in ministry. When was there ever a man who preached the words of God with such clarity and conviction that even those within the circle of faith despised him? Did Jesus not walk the same road as Isaiah? Hated by many of his own and despised by those from his homeland, eventually crucified by those who were supposedly seeking the messiah. This is the calling of God's minister, especially in the modern day where the spirit of compromise and non-offense is the air that we breathe.
God's ministers are to speak the words of the scriptures with heart cutting clarity. And to the extent that this puts outside of special groups of people, special privileges and even those within Christianity, we continue to preach anyway. Until our vocal chords no longer carry breath, we preach the words of God. One of the nearest applicatins of what it means to depart for the hard places is to go somewhere where you may despised, where you may be run out of town. To depart for the hard places means preaching the whole counsel of God even if people do not want to hear it.
There is a certain courage and unflappability behind God's men (lay or "professional"). God's men are those who carry his words to all peoples. God's men are those who do not bow down to the spirit of the age and become softer in order to gain the acceptance of those around them. God's men have experienced such a profound sense of conviction and so wonderfully experienced the love of God in the atonement that they will go anywhere and face anything to serve the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. They will preach the true gospel to the people in their churches. They will not teach a gospel that says God died for us becuase we worth it. They will not convince people that the gospel will give them a "good life"; but rather that those who come to Christ will be called to lose everything. They will go to the ends of the earth to preach the gospel. They will go to Muslim lands in the 10/40 window though thy may only see 1-2 converts in their lifetime. They will not seek the honor and approval of man but the honor and approval of God alone. Yes these are God's men... God's men are the ones who will depart for the hard places.