Isaiah 6:1-8
Face-to-Face with Your Maker
Prepare to meet your maker! Have you ever wondered what it will be like to see God face-to-face? The ancient prophet Isaiah actually had occasion to do so, and he didn’t die. God gave him a vision that would forever change him. As I looked at Isaiah’s story, I thought, “This is a lot like how we come to God!” Some people think they have to get their life together first, before they ever set foot back in church, or before they consider asking something of God. Yet, Isaiah’s story says, “Come as you are, and be forever changed!” Consider the four steps on your outline . First, we need to ...
1. Experience God’s glory (vv. 1-4)
Isaiah has a multi-sensory experience of God. He sees the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne. He sees this train of God’s robe that fills the entire temple. (It reminds me of the long train on wedding dress worn by Meghan Markle, the new Duchess of Sussex. Yet God’s is even larger!) Then Isaiah notes these strange six-winged creatures called “seraphim,” the name meaning “burning ones.” You find them only here in this passage in the Bible. They function as some kind of honor guard for God. Isaiah hears them singing a “Holy, holy, holy” chorus to God, attributing an infinite amount of holiness to him. And Isaiah feels the doorposts shake and smells smoke filling the temple.
Isaiah experiences a God so much bigger than he is, a God more powerful and transcendent and holy than he could ever imagine. When you worship, whether in a church service or in your prayer closet or with your Bible open on your lap, look for a God who is bigger and more powerful and holier than anything you can imagine. Seek out more of God. Jeremiah 29:13 quotes God as saying, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Experience God’s glory. And when you do, you will ...
2. Sense your unworthiness (v. 5)
After Isaiah encounters the greatness of God, he says, in verse 5, “Woe to me! ... 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.” Isaiah knows that to see God is to die. No mere human can handle God’s greatness. The more he understands God’s glory, the more he is aware of his own shortcomings, as well as those of his people. He knows that the human race simply does not measure up.
I’m reminded of the apostle Peter, when Jesus tells the disciples to fish on the other side of the boat. They catch such a load that Peter suddenly realizes he is in the presence of deity. Luke 5:8 records the moment: “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”
When we spend time with God, we grow convicted of the areas where we don’t measure up. We realize the truth of Romans 3:23, that we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. As Micah Wood says, “Before the Gospel heals a man, it humbles a man. It tells him the depth of his need for God.” Or to quote Trevin Wax, “Hell is full of people who think they deserve heaven. Heaven is full of people who know they deserve hell.”
This humility is absolutely essential to have a relationship with God: you must realize that you don’t measure up. As Jesus said, “No one is good—except God alone” (Mark 10:18). If you want to connect with the God who made you, who loves you, who sustains you, you have to get honest about your sin. You must realize that you absolutely cannot get there on your own. But don’t despair! In our lowest moments, God meets us. Experience God’s glory, sense your unworthiness, and ...
3. Receive God’s cleansing (vv. 6-7)
What we cannot do for ourselves, God does for us. God cleanses us from all sin the moment we place our faith in his son Jesus. In Isaiah’s story, the moment he cries out that he is ruined, God sends a seraph to cover his guilt. The seraph touches his mouth with a hot coal, which would remind any Jewish believer of the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, when the high priest would bring a live coal into the Holy of Holies. The fire represents both God’s wrath and God’s purification.
Isaiah says, in verse 7, “With [the coal] he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’” The seraph guaranteed two things. First, he said, “Your guilt is taken away.” This is reminiscent of the goat the high priest would figuratively load down all the sins of the nation, and then drive out into the wilderness never to be seen again. This is where we get the term, “scapegoat.” An innocent has to pay for the sins of the guilty.
Then, the seraph says, “Your sin is atoned for.” The phrase “atoned for” means to be covered. In ancient Israel, the priest killed animals and symbolically covered a person’s sin with the blood of the innocent. We have been covered with the blood of Jesus, the ultimate sacrifice. Someone once said you can break out the word “atonement” to “at-one-ment,” because the sacrifice makes us “at one” again with our God. Jesus covers our sins with his blood. The book of Hebrews describes him as the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. Isaiah was looking forward to a Messiah one day; we can look back on him with gratitude.
How much did Isaiah do to cleanse himself? Absolutely nothing! Max Lucado notes, “Isaiah makes no request. He asks for no grace. Indeed, he likely assumed mercy was impossible. But God, who is quick to pardon and full of mercy, purges Isaiah of his sin and redirects his life.” This is the grace of the gospel message. Although we are sinful, if we call out to God, God alone will take it away.
Once we have admitted our sin and received God’s cleansing, we are then prepared to ...
4. Respond to God’s call (v. 8)
Verse 8 records God’s call to Isaiah. “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!’”
God will never call you to what he has not prepared you for. History shows that God had prepared Isaiah for a very difficult calling indeed. He would preach as the rest of the Northern Kingdom fell. He would keep prophesying. And 100 years later, the Southern Kingdom would fall. God told him that he would prophesy so people’s hearts would grow harder. God’s people would choose to reject God and his prophet, and so God would allow them to be taken into captivity, many to die, with only a remnant to remain.
Isaiah himself would pay a price. He would go up against king after king who were wicked in the heart. The Jewish Talmud records that, ultimately, Isaiah was sawn in half by the evil king Manasseh. Yet, he was courageous to the end. He never balked. Something about today’s calling sealed his fortitude. It prepared him for what lay ahead.
The Apostle John, in John 12:39-41, would later quote from this sixth chapter of Isaiah when he wrote, "For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:
'He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their hearts,
so they can neither see with their eyes,
nor understand with their hearts,
nor turn—and I would heal them.' [And note what John observed...]
"Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him."
What??? Jesus’ glory??? You see—on this Trinity Sunday—we can somehow try to imagine that it was the glory of Jesus Isaiah saw that day. This was Christ pre-incarnate, long before Bethlehem, long before Calvary. This is the pre-incarnate Lord, the one who, according to Colossians 1, was present at creation. This is the Son of God, deity in human form. And Isaiah saw him...and lived to tell about it.
Someday we will see our Lord face to face. And I suspect that we—like the elders in Revelation—will throw down our crowns before him. No reward too great to surrender to him, with every accomplishment secondary to Jesus’ accomplishment for us on the cross. We will bow down and give glory to the one who calls us to eternal life, the one who calls us to service. Let us pray:
Heavenly Father, like Isaiah we want to see you, to know more of you, to be in your presence. Yet, like Isaiah, the better we get to know you, the more we see our own sin, our own transgression, our own rebellion. Please touch a coal to our lips. Please cover our sin as only you can do, with the blood of Jesus, and help us to accept your cleansing, knowing we are forgiven, never to condemn ourselves again, but to walk with you in fellowship. Please help someone come to you for the very first time in this moment today. In Jesus’ name, amen.
