Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? (Isaiah 6:8)

 Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? (Isaiah 6:8)

An ambassador’s job seems noble, representing the king or government and speaking for them before foreign powers. But we can imagine situations where their job is less enjoyable and even downright dangerous, as they are called to deliver a message that the foreign power does not appreciate. Isaiah was God’s ambassador.

But Isaiah was sent to God’s own people. However, they had wandered, and were no longer listening to God, and thus not listening to God’s emissary. The text from our title goes on to say that they are “listening, but not perceiving; looking, but not understanding.” They have ears and eyes and minds and hearts for other things.

Moses was sent before Pharaoh, ruler of Egypt, to seek the release of the enslaved descendants of Abraham. Appearing before the most powerful man in the world at the time, Moses was rebuffed, even as he introduced plague after plague that would decimate Egypt. He was an unappreciated ambassador!

Jeremiah the prophet, after Isaiah, was put in prison. He was publicly bound in stocks for humiliation. He was thrown in a watery pit, perhaps a sewer of sorts. Speaking God’s word to the people, he was regarded as unpatriotic.

The leaders of the northern kingdom said to Amos the prophet, “Go, you seer, flee away to the land of Judah and there eat bread and there do your prophesying! But no longer prophesy at Bethel, for it is a sanctuary of the king and a royal residence.”

Jesus, then, in the Beatitudes, said “Blessed are those who have been persecuted … for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

What we must digest, then, from this consistent trend throughout Scripture, is that when commissioned by God to be an ambassador, or a prophet, or a preacher, or a witness - it is not for the sake of popularity. Our job is not to appeal to unbelievers with enticing words, though we should always be respectful. We are not to measure success by “customers’” happiness. Ambassadors are to speak the message of the authority that they represent - no more, and no less. And we seem to have forgotten that. 

Jesus sent His disciples on mission. His instruction? “Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet.”