Isaiah 6:1-8 *
Dear Friends in Christ,
People normally enter into a new job or occupation in a rather ordinary, unspectacular way. Maybe there are some phone calls and meetings and interviews and introductions as part of the process, but usually there is no fanfare or fireworks…
Unless, of course, you are living approximately 7.5 centuries before the birth of Christ, your name is Isaiah, and you happen to be (as we just sang) a “Mighty Seer in Days of Old.” Then things would be a little different…
Maybe it was because of the difficulty of the task at hand, or the length for which he would be asked to do it, or the seemingly meager results for positive change it would ultimately yield; whatever the Lord’s divine reasoning may have been, Isaiah was commissioned into his ministry in a very memorable and spectacular way – complete with a vision of God and angels and all sorts of accompanying sights and sounds.
All of which is supremely interesting for us – but, we may think to ourselves, somewhat hard to personally relate to. Or is it? The outward circumstances of what Isaiah went through, yes. But the inward emotions that he exhibited as he was going through it – there we can find a real connection between Isaiah and ourselves. In fact, Isaiah mirrors the path of our own discipleship as Christians…
That being said, let’s work our way through this text and spend the next several minutes
IDENTIFYING WITH ISAIAH
A man who was progressively
1. Horrified by holiness
2. Cleansed by a coal
3. Moved to ministry
In the year that King
Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train
of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above
him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces,
with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his
glory.” 4 At the sound of
their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with
smoke.
Once again, Isaiah’s calling was spectacular. Let’s consider just a few of the things that came into his field of vision…
First and foremost, he saw the Lord. He describes Him in terms of royalty and majesty and might and power. Isaiah notes how “the train of his robe filled the temple.” This is significant, because in ancient days the clothing of kings was a measure of their status. The more important the man, the more ornate and extensive his wardrobe. God’s robe filled the temple! His majesty is signified by the magnificence and the sheer volume of his garments!
Then there were those six winged angels called “seraphs.” In everything they do and say they convey the eternal holiness and majesty of God. With two wings they cover their face lest they look upon pure radiance. With two wings they cover their feet. Why? A couple of Bible scholars I read suggest feet are a sign of creatureliness, so they covered them in deference to the fact they are in the presence of the Creator. Maybe. And with two wings they are hovering above the King of Kings and calling back and forth to each other: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
Then, as an indication that the whole earth does indeed bow
to His glory, even the inanimate objects in Isaiah’s vision have the good sense
of rendering themselves subservient to God, for we are told: “At
the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was
filled with smoke.”
What a vision. The
Lord is high and exalted and worthy of praise and glory. But above all he is holy. Holiness is the essence of God. And as we can see from his reaction, it was
the holiness of God that absolutely terrified Isaiah: 5
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I
live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD
Almighty.”
Just as bright light shows all flaws and imperfections in our clothing or on our bodies, when mortals come into the presence of holiness, they are shown for what they are and become acutely aware of their spiritual flaws and imperfections. Compared to the holiness of God, Isaiah (as well as Peter in our Gospel lesson for today) sees himself for what he is: a sinful human being. A sinner who doesn’t belong in the company of the holy. A sinner who is unfit to be in the presence of God. A sinner whom a holy God has every right to cast out as one who is in a place he doesn’t belong. Isaiah knows all this and confesses all this…
What’s interesting (and instructive for us) is how thoroughly Isaiah identifies with his countrymen. Compared to them, he was a very righteous man. In fact, he’s going to spend a good many years denouncing them and passing God’s judgment on them for all kinds of open wickedness and idolatry and injustice and rejection of God in their lives.
But Isaiah understands that in the presence of God, degrees of sin become irrelevant. Isaiah knows that each individual must hold himself or herself not against the standard of others, but against the perfect standard of God’s holiness. And Isaiah, outwardly righteous as he may have been in contrast to others, knew that he had been weighed in the balance and found wanting before a holy God. So if he was going to stand in the presence of God, now or forever, something outside of his own sin-tainted efforts would have to happen…
And it did. Horrified by holiness and acutely aware of his sinfulness, Isaiah is now cleansed by a coal. 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” The point: Isaiah is completely cleansed purely by an act of God’s grace. God’s love and mercy provide the initiative. God does for Isaiah something he could never do for himself: provides him with forgiveness. And now Isaiah can not only stand in the presence of the Holy, but He can live with the Holy One forever…
Not surprisingly, perhaps, some of the early church fathers regarded the coal as symbolic of the Son of God, and in some early Christian literature Jesus Christ is designated as a live or burning coal. The symbolism is certainly appropriate. As the coal from the altar took away Isaiah’s guilt, so Jesus Christ takes away all our sin and guilt before a holy God. His perfect life, sacrificial death and glorious resurrection in our place and on our behalf means that we also can stand in the presence of the Holy now and forever. The bottom line for Isaiah and us is the same: We are saved purely by God’s grace.
Such an outpouring of grace did not escape Isaiah. In fact, it changed him. Not only in his relationship with God, but
also in his desire to now, as a saved-by-grace sinner, be used by God as His
instrument and for His purposes: Our
text concludes as one who was at first horrified by holiness, but then cleansed
by a coal, now completes his path of discipleship and is moved to ministry: 8
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who
will go for us?” And I said, “Here am
What can we learn from this text and apply to our lives? Several things. Again, let us follow the steps we see in Isaiah. First, this text speaks to us about the holiness of God and, on the flip side, the seriousness of sin.
We know from Scripture that God is a host of things and has a host of qualities that He in His grace and wisdom applies to us, His children, at the necessary times in our lives. At different points in our lives we have all experienced the love of God and the forgiveness of God and the strength of God and the comfort of God. We have come to rely on these qualities of our Heavenly Father, and well we should. He has promised them to us and He never fails to deliver…
But among the qualities of God we find ourselves thinking about, how often do we contemplate the holiness of God and our lives as His children in view of it? That is a question put to us by our text. And it is an important one, because when we as Christians fail to do this, what can often result is a rather lax attitude toward sin, or an idea about God that lends itself not our serving Him, but to manipulating Him for our own ends. I’m reminded of what a German poet said as he came to the end of a spiritually reckless and dissolute life. When asked if he had any regrets, he expressed none and then made the rather flippant remark: “God will forgive me. That’s his specialty.”
But such a relaxed attitude toward sin militates against the holiness of God. And a holy God says sin is serious business. Not only because of what it took to remove it – the life of His only Son – but because of the damage it does in our personal relationship to God and others. Listen to this quote from a Christian author:
When we sin we not
only commit treason against God but we do violence to each other. Sin violates people. There is nothing abstract about it. By my sin I hurt human beings. I injure their person; I despoil their goods; I impair their reputation; I rob from them a
precious quality of life; I crush their dreams and aspirations for
happiness. When I dishonor God I
dishonor all mankind who bears His image.
Wonder then that God takes sin so seriously? (from “The Holiness of
God” by R.C. Sproul)
Bottom line: A holy God takes sin seriously. As God’s children who seek to honor Him with our lives, so must we. But I can tell you, try as we might, we will fail. Not because we want to or desire to, but because we are mortals who carry around our sinful natures till the day we die. But when we fail, we know where to go. Not into the pit of despair or the slough of despond; we go to the cross. As the live coal touched Isaiah’s lips, the cross of Jesus Christ touches our hearts. And we are cleansed. In Christ we find grace. In Him we find forgiveness. In Him we find power for living. And because of His amazing grace, we, like Isaiah, are moved to ministry…
Those who understand the depth of their own sin and the even
greater depth of God’s grace cannot help but chart a new path in life. And so when it comes to going forth and doing
God’s bidding and being His representatives before a watching world, with
Isaiah we also say: “Here am I, Lord, send me…”
We’re not necessarily talking about enlisting for world mission work or something grandiose or distant. One of the great Scriptural truths uncovered in the Lutheran Reformation was the doctrine of the “universal priesthood,” meaning we are all priests before God. Another teaching related to that is sometimes referred to as the doctrine of “vocation,” meaning we recognize that we can minister in whatever vocation – and location – the Lord has put us.
In other words – and as Isaiah’s response applies to each of us – what we who are touched by grace simply want to do is ministry, wherever the Lord places us. In our homes. At our work. With our family. With our friends. Wherever the Lord places us, we have been sent. And we can minister, if not with words (at first), with actions and attitudes. And God will be glorified. And we will be fulfilled. Because we know we are doing what He would have us do – and what we ourselves have been moved to do. Because we have been touched by grace…
So to sum up the message of this other-worldly text: We may
not share with “Isaiah Mighty Seer in Days of Old” the external circumstances
of his calling, but we can certainly identify with what he went through
internally. Horrified by the holiness of
God in contrast to our sinfulness, we have been cleansed by the coal of the
Gospel, which moves us to the desire for holy living and ministry… wherever and
whenever God leads. That was the path of
Isaiah’s discipleship. Praise be to God, it is our path as well. Amen.