June 3, 2012 Isaiah 6:1-8
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. 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. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “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 of hosts.” Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
Qadosh, qadosh, qadosh. Those are the words the angels sang to one another as they hovered over the throne of God. The angels themselves were burning with their own holiness, yet even when they stood guard above the Lord they were filled with fear and humility, as they covered their faces and feet in front of God’s throne.
They are singular words, yet spoken three times. They reflect the complexity of our God. He is three Persons, as reflected in the repetitive three-fold phrase. Yet he is also singular; one God; as reflected in the singular word “holy.” The word “holy” in the Hebrew means “separated” and “set apart.” We tend to think of God as being “up there” or “out there.” But that’s not what God really means. What He means is that He is above and beyond us in who He is. He is nothing like us in His essence. He is purely holy. He is everywhere. He is almighty. He is eternal. We are not. We have a beginning. We are contaminated with sin. We die. We are not all-knowing. We are weak. In these ways God is above and beyond us. He is separate from us, and even separate from the angels in this sense. That is why even the angels sing “Holy, holy, holy” about Him – not because He is above and beyond them in space - but in glory.
If the angels were embarrassed to stand in the LORD’s presence, then imagine how Isaiah felt. Sometimes when you are invited to a get-together you wonder what the dress attire is going to be. The other day I was invited to a member’s home to eat. I had been busy with the children all afternoon, and then picked up shop hurriedly to take the kids over. Little did I realize until the evening was nearly over that I was still wearing my old clothes; stain on my shirt and all. I was going to change, but I forgot. Even though I wasn’t in the presence of God I still felt a little embarrassed at that. So when Isaiah found himself placed in the presence of the LORD, he didn’t feel worthy of it. He cried out, “Woe is me.” “Woe” was a passionate cry of grief or despair. You might compare it to when we say, “Oh no!” That’s how Isaiah felt.
It was this concept of standing before God as sinners that used to terrorize Christians for hundreds of years. They were so worried about standing before God that after about four or five hundred A.D. they decided to come up with a place that they could go before they stood before the throne of God. They called it “purgatory.” It was a place where you could come face to face with your sins and realize what you’d done. You might compare it to walking along the ledge of a cliff on a complicated ledge with burning sulfur underneath. Sometimes you slip. You constantly feel the heat. But in the midst of this eternal climb, there is the hope of ascension. You know that amidst all of the heat and suffering you are ascending. So even though it was painful, it was a good pain; because it was drawing you closer to God.
Well, over time the Christians got lazy, and didn’t want to suffer for hundreds and thousands of years. So they decided to come up with indulgences, where the Pope could draw on a treasury of merits from the saints and use their works to give people an escalator ride out of the fiery pit of purgatory. If you paid the right price he’d let you out of your suffering, even though that suffering was supposed to be good. So the lazy Christians who didn’t want to suffer paid for their indulgences which basically gave them a get out of jail free card. In reality, it taught that the works of the saints would enable them to stand before Jesus on Judgment Day and face Him.
When I talk about this it might seem rather funny to you or odd, because people don’t worry or care about such things today. Recent surveys in 2011 sum it up pretty well.
• 44% told the 2011 Baylor University Religion Survey they spend no time seeking "eternal wisdom," and 19% said "it's useless to search for meaning."
• 46% told a 2011 survey by Nashville-based evangelical research agency, LifeWay Research, they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.
• 28% told LifeWay "it's not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose." And 18% scoffed at the idea that God has a purpose or plan for everyone.
In other words, we are living in a “So What?” society. What does that mean for God? It means that people don’t really think about Him or care about Him any more.
I notice this in teaching children. More and more it seems that they’d rather be playing video games or texting their friends than listening to God’s Word. God’s Word is more a diversion from life than the focus of life. Several years ago a family that used to belong here finally came to church after weeks of contacting them. When they were in the service, the daughter sat and texted with her friends. I thought, “Really? How much more disrespectful can you get?” What is that but the devil’s work? The devil has been working overtime to attack your brains; to get you thinking that you need to constantly be talking with this person or that; checking this update and that; as if your whole world revolved around what your friends think of going to the pool or the latest restaurant; where your whole self worth revolves around whether someone likes your status or not.
The devil replaces your status with God with your status on Facebook or work. God, well you know He’s loving and all. You know He’s nice. You know Jesus died for you. What more do you need to know about or care about? Why worry about standing in His presence? Why think about how “holy” God is or not? What does it really matter in the big scheme of things? His holiness doesn’t pay your bills. His holiness doesn’t get you a raise. At least that’s the way you might think.
But when Isaiah actually was taken into the presence of the LORD, he realized how holy God really was; that even the angels blush in His presence! Even though he was a believer, he still had a profound sense of guilt and fear at that moment. He cried out, “Woe is me!” He never realized how holy the LORD really was, and he was scared he was going to die!
When I was in college I had a very good professor who demanded a lot of the student. I was too lazy to take his electives at the time because I didn’t want to do that much work. Now that I’m older, I wish I had because I could have learned so much more from him. When a child grows older he tends to think, “What do I need to listen to my parents for? They don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re out of my times. They don’t get it.” Then when they go through the school of hard knocks and they say, “I wish I had listened to my parents. I would have saved myself a lot of heartache, but I was too stubborn.”
You might say to yourself, “What does it matter to me to even worry or think about how holy the Lord is?” When you think about His holiness, then you also have to realize that everything He does and everything He says is holy; it’s way above and beyond what we can even comprehend as good and true. So if we can know and understand what is good and true, then we will somehow be blessed, even if we don’t understand how.
Here’s an example. When Elisha the prophet was dying, King Jehoash went to see him. He cried over Elisha, recognizing that the LORD had worked wonderful miracles through him and spoken to Israel through him. Elisha told him to take some arrows and strike them on the ground. Now, this didn’t make sense to Jehoash. Why should he strike the arrows on the ground? What was the purpose of it? What was the use? It seemed like child’s play to the king. So he only did it half-heartedly, striking the ground three times. So 2 Kings 13:19 says, “The man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times.” Since Jehoash didn’t take the Word of the prophet seriously and didn’t realize the hidden power behind what he was doing, his ignorance cost him the blessings of the Lord. The example shows that when you know and believe God’s Word, He doesn’t want you to ignore it or treat it like child’s play. He wants you to honor it and believe in it in order to receive God’s blessings and God’s power.
The book of Proverbs warns people that want to ignore Him. It says,
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: “How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you. But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you— when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. (Proverbs 1:20-27)
It is interesting to dissect what the angels say about the Holy Holy Holy LORD of hosts. They say, “the whole earth is full of His glory.” I touched on that aspect of glory back at Christmas time. We tend to think of brightness and light when it comes to glory. But that’s not what the Word really means. It really refers to “heaviness” and “depth.” So the angels say that the whole EARTH doesn’t just have a hint or smidgeon of His glory, but that the WHOLE earth is FULL of His glory.
I got to thinking about that. What does that mean? The whole earth is FULL of his glory. Well, just think about the flowers of the field for a minute. You might walk by a flower in the field and say, “Wow, that sure is a pretty flower.” But think about what goes into that simple flower.
• BOTANISTS put a lifetime of study into flowers, determining which ones are poisonous and which ones are medicinal; what their purposes are and what classes they fall into based on their stems and their flowers; how they pollinate, etc.
• But that still doesn’t determine how the cells function and the process of photosynthesis. You need a completely different field to look into that as the BIOLOGIST looks into the inner workings of the flower.
• Even that is not deep enough. When you did deeper into the flower, you need to try and understand how those cells function and reproduce. For that you need a GENETICIST to look into the DNA and basic chemistry of the cells.
• That takes you into an even deeper study as to how atoms and molecules interact and the forces the drive the atoms within the flower. For that you need a PHYSICIST. Who knows? Over time we may have to even look deeper.
You go into the rabbit hole of the flower and it takes you deeper and deeper into the basic flower. It takes four different professions just to figure out how it is made and functions, yet that doesn’t even begin to describe how the flowers interact with nature and how they are important to the survival of other species.
So when Jesus told us in His Sermon on the Mount to just look at how GOD clothes the flowers of the field, little did we know how deep it would go! When Isaiah says how the whole earth is full of the glory of the LORD, might we see how God has put His divine wisdom into even the most meaningless flowers of the field? In studying the world even Albert Einstein once said, “The universe is not merely more complicated than we can understand. It’s more complicated than we can IMAGINE.” Yet in their quest to understand and explain the very “experts” have tried to postulate explanations behind all that exists with a big bang instead of an Almighty Creator. The glory of the LORD has been replaced by an ancient mistake. God put His wisdom here so that people realize that He exists and so that they would look for the One who designed this marvelous Creation that we live in. Yet those very geneticists and physicists do all they can to promote their own theory of evolution. So we live in a world that doesn’t seek Him and doesn’t care to seek Him; they have determined God to be irrelevant, even though the Word says that He is the One who enables us to live and move and have our being.
If that is how deep God has made a simple flower, then think about how deep He Himself is. Think about the deep glory of the birth of Christ! Our eyes and ears would say, “There is a cute little poor boy born in a cattle stall.” The Word of God says, “You don’t understand the glory hidden within, for within that weak flesh God is dwelling!” Think of the profound depths of the cross. Reason would say, “Poor Jesus is being blamed and hated for crimes he didn’t do.” The Word says, “It’s much deeper and glorious than that! God Himself is blaming His Son for the sins of the world and making Him pay for them. God Himself is dying on that cross for the world of sinners and earning their forgiveness!” The Word just gets so deep as it explains how angels and demons are flying around us, and we can’t even see them! The Word gets so deep when it talks about baptism and the Lord's Supper, it’s hard to believe they are so profound and powerful! You say you can’t understand the Trinity? You think you should? Would you really want God to fit into your brain? This holy God is watching everything you do! It is all just so profound and deep and glorious! When we really get to thinking about it, it makes us feel like slobs and peons when the Holy Spirit lifts the veil of reality around us. It makes us shout with Isaiah, “Woe is me!”
What is more glorious is the reaction of the Holy Holy Holy LORD! He knows how glorious He is and how sinful Isaiah is, yet He doesn’t shout to Isaiah, “Get out of here! Who do you think you are, standing in my presence!” The train of His robe FILLS THE TEMPLE. His glorious righteousness covers everyone standing there. Isaiah didn’t feel worthy to stand there, and neither do we. But instead of chasing him away, God sent an angel to do something so wonderfully gracious for him. Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.
This simple gesture is just loaded with glory. Think of where he gathers the coal from, from the altar; where sacrifices are made. Instead of throwing Isaiah on the altar, the angel takes something from the altar which has already been sacrificed. Isaiah does nothing but sit there and fear, and the angel comes and applies the coal to his unclean lips, and he declares to Isaiah, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” With a simple touch of the powerful coal he promised Isaiah that his guilt was taken away and his sin atoned for.
Guilt is the result of sin; the punishment that comes along with breaking the law. It’s kind of like when you speed and get pulled over. The guilt would be the ticket that you get and have to pay as a result of your sin. The angel said that because of the coal his guilt had literally been turned away from him. Even his sin was atoned for, which means that it had been covered.
Isn’t this just a wonderful picture of what Christ would do on the cross? By going on the sacrificial fire of God’s wrath, Jesus was able to avert the wrath of God for Himself. We don’t have to go through a fiery furnace of purgatory. God doesn’t tell us to earn that forgiveness. He comes and applies it to us through baptism and the Lord's Supper, where God’s Word promises us that He covers us and fills us with the forgiveness of sins which Jesus won for us. What is the greatest glory of God; that He applies the wonders of salvation to us through the sacrifice Christ already made for us 2,000 years ago.
Qadosh, qadosh, qadosh. The seraphim were even too ashamed to look at such a deep and holy being. So many people are running around like slobs in this world; imagining God to be much less glorious than He really is; not even concerning themselves with who He is or what He looks like. God says that He will one day pull their skirts over their faces and exploit to the world how shameful they really are if they don’t wake up to His glory.
The Triune God is Holy, Holy, Holy. He is deep in glory, and He has revealed His glory to us in Jesus Christ. The robe of His righteousness has been placed over us. The Holy Spirit has come to us and purified us in the Father’s sight. Instead of saying “woe is me,” with a mouth of faith we say, “Blessed is me, for my eyes have seen the beauty of the coming of the Lord in Jesus Christ.” What a Holy, Holy, Holy LORD we have to look at and talk about. Amen.
