Isaiah 6:1-13

Transcript

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Today's passage comes from Isaiah chapter six, verses one through thirteen. In the year King Usiah died, ending a fifty-two year reign of relative stability, Isaiah receives a vision that reframes everything, the Lord himself, high and exalted, his robe filling the temple surrounded by Seraphim crying holy, holy, holy. Now the vision does not comfort Isaiah, it ruins him actually. It makes him despair. It's only after he is cleansed does he hear the call, and only after he answers the call does he receive the hardest assignment of his ministry, which was to preach to a people who will not listen until the land is emptied and only a stump remains. What a vision. I mean, would any one of us answer the call if the call was seemingly fruitless compared to our efforts? The people don't listen to us and and the results we don't have a whole lot of success to show because the land is desolate and only a stump remain. But that was precisely how God was calling Isaiah. Now why why is that? Why did God call Isaiah into seemingly a worthless situation? Let's take a look. Now this chapter is the hinge of Isaiah's whole book. The prophet who has already announced God's covenant lawsuit against Judah in chapters one through five now receives his own commission in the throne room of God before the true king. Now because we read the Bible as one unfolding story of redemption, we must read Isaiah six in the context of the overall Bible. The Apostle John later tells us plainly whose glory Isaiah in chapter six actually saw. And the stump left standing in verse thirteen, we realize becomes a few chapters later, a green shoot with a name, actually. So well let's take a look. Who is God in this passage? God is revealed here as high and exalted, filling the temple with just the train of his robe. An image of a throne room too vast for any single description to contain. What's interesting here is that the Seraphim, the Seraphims are the ones who dwell in God's direct presence, but yet they still cover their faces and feet before God. Now this is a detail that tells us something about nearness to holiness, even for unfallen creatures such as Seraphim. There a threefold cry, holy, holy, holy, is the only attribute in Scripture ever tripled this way for emphasis. And here, so therefore, God is not merely holy the way a person might be honest or kind. No, holiness is the very essence of who God is. Holiness is what makes God God and not man. So the New Testament adds a staggering layer to this vision, actually. John chapter 12, verse 41 says of Isaiah that Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him. The Lord high and exalted on the throne in Isaiah six is indeed in the fuller light of the gospel, the preincarnate glory of the Son. The one Isaiah could not bear to look upon directly is the same one who would later, seven centuries later, be born in a manger in Bethlehem and later look his own disciples in the eye at the table. So from this passage, what do we learn? We learn that Isaiah does not respond to holiness with just admiration. No, he's he responds with panic. Isaiah just doesn't look at God's holiness and say, Oh wow, God's holy, that's cool. No, he doesn't do that. He says, Woe to me, I am ruined, for I'm a man of unclean lips. Now this this should matter to you and me. That Isaiah, who was he? He was already a prophet, he was already commissioned to speak for God in chapters one through five, and that this is precisely that this Isaiah, and that because he was a preacher and a prophet, the very organ that he used for ministry, meaning his lips, that he now names as unclean. Oh no, I'm ruined, I'm unclean, I'm on I'm unworthy of this call. You see, nearness to real holiness does not inflate a person. So somebody prays hard, somebody reads the word a lot, and if somebody is getting closer to God, the last thing that the person will inflate would be his own ego, his own righteousness, his own sense of importance. No rather, as we get closer to God, all of those things will end. Now the guilt in this chapter is not merely a personal thing. No, in verses 9 through 10 describe a corporate national hardening of the hearts. Isaiah is sent to preach preach to the nation, group of people, a society that the people, and according to the way the Isaiah is recorded, is ever hearing but never understanding. So their hearts grow calloused. And this is not God manufacturing unbelief out of out of nothing. I don't want us to think like people wanted to believe in God and people wanted to repent, but somehow God stopped them from doing that. No. The passage of Isaiah 6 is reminding us that they were already uh hardened. And God's point is by sending the prophet, God is pronouncing his judgment upon the ungrateful, uh unworthy nation such as the covenant community that we find in the book of Isaiah. Now the New Testament treats this uh principle rather um significantly enough to quote repeatedly. Jesus applies these very words of Isaiah to his own parables in Matthew thirteen, verses fourteen through fifteen, Mark chapter four, and Luke eight, and so on. Hardening a people who have already hardened themselves is a real and sobering biblical category, and it should press every reader to ask this question whether familiarity with God's word has quietly become a comfort, has some somehow made us more intellectually lazy rather than a call to repent while there is still time. Let's think about that. Um before Isaiah is sent, he's cleansed. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. Isaiah does not clean himself up to qualify for ministry. No, he's he feels he's ruined, and then only then touched by something taken from a place of worship and sacrifice and holiness, only then can Isaiah be sent. Now this is not just applicable to Isaiah only. This is actually a pattern of grace that is found in the Bible throughout. God's holiness exposes us our sin and guilt, but he exposes us not to destroy, but he exposes us in order to build. God's altar cleanses, God's altar is a place of worship, God's altar is where the word of God, the revelation is proclaimed, God's altar is where the holiness of God dwells, and only then does God commission Isaiah and you and me as well. So even the severe judgment of verses thirty eleven through thirteen, even those verses end with a small, deliberate mercy. The holy seed will be the stump in the land thirteen. A total wipeout was possible and deserving, but instead God preserves a stump, a seed, and Isaiah himself will later describe a shoot growing from just a just a stump. A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots a branch will be will bear fruit. Isaiah eleven one. So the remnant preserved in chapter six becomes by chapter eleven the root of the Messiah himself, a redemption that Messiah brings. There is a continuity of the story and the narrative. The same God whose holiness ruins Isaiah initially in chap in verse five is the same God who through that same holy line sends his own son so that ruined people could be touched, cleansed, and given the purpose of life as God calls them and God sends them. So yeah, well that's it. Thanks for thanks once again for joining us. Um I hope that you find my sharing of this Bible meditation helpful, and uh you can you can read more about other um I think interesting topics and other um Bible study materials uh on my homepage at jubileecoach.com. Under the live block section, you will find um many more uh resources that you might find helpful. So until next time, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ increase in you that we you and I might be faithful this day and unto the day of the Lord Jesus and forevermore. Amen.