The Gospel Acording to Isaiah: Part 2
I Saw the Lord
Isaiah 6:1-8
March 3, 2012
Rev. Stephen Aram
Have you ever heard someone ask the question “Is there nothing sacred anymore?” Have you ever asked it yourself? We are living in an unusual era in the history of the world, an era when secularization is a powerful movement and at an all time high. Some of that is appropriate. We don’t have public school teachers leading prayers in class. That’s a protection for families who may not want their children to be indoctrinated in a religion that the parents don’t follow. It’s a protection for the church because I don’t want just anybody leading in prayers with my grandkids if their hearts aren’t in it and the public schools are just not equipped to ensure that every teacher is spiritually qualified.
But secularization has spread much farther than just practical separation of church and state. As a culture we are losing any sense of the holy. You can hear it in the increasingly public use of profane language. Profane language takes things that are beautiful, for example parts of the human body that was created and blessed by God, and talks about them in demeaning ways. It takes the sacred union of husband and wife and talks about it in demeaning ways. It was way back in 1972 that comedian George Carlin made his monologue, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” I’m not going to list off the 7 words for you, I’m sure you can guess most of them. Some of them you do hear on television now. That monolog got him arrested for disturbing the peace at the Summerfest in Milwaukee. But now profane language, language intended to demean the human body, is much more public. It’s much more commonly accepted.
But there is something much more serious about secularization. In the late 1800s the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche announced that God is dead. That’s an extreme secularization. And what happens when you deny the presence of God, the presence of anything holy? Nietzsche predicted that the 20th century would be the bloodiest century in history and a sort of universal madness would break out. And he was right. The 20th century gave us the 2 great world wars, the ideology of atheistic Marxism that went to such extremes to impose an atheistic society in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia, that it just slaughtered millions of people who refused to accept militant atheism.
The founders of our country recognized that all humans “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Take the creator out of that equation and what do you have?
Christians believe that all humans are created in the image of God and that makes human life sacred. We are to respect all persons. We are to care for those who are hurting and do it with compassion. Take away the concept that we are made in the image of God and human life becomes cheap. It becomes anything you want it to be.
Our text today describes a moment in the year when Uzziah, one of the greatest kings of Judah, died. It was a scary year. Uzziah had kept them strong and free for many years. Now he was gone. The superpower of that era, Assyria, was on the march. It had already swallowed up many of Judah’s neighbors. Would Uzziah’s son, the new king be able to stand against the Assyrians? People in Jerusalem were really anxious.
Now hear the word of God, as written by the prophet Isaiah, as he had an amazing encounter with the Holy God of Israel.
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." 4 The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." 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 I; send me!"
Can you hear pretty much the entire order of salvation from the New Testament here in Isaiah’s experience centuries before Jesus was born?
It started with an awareness of the wonder of God. John Oswalt summarizes what Isaiah saw of God with three words: majestic, transcendent and holy. Oh, we all need to realize the wonder of our God, that he is majestic, transcendent and holy.
But what do those words mean? Majestic means grand, powerful, and awesome. In verse 1 Isaiah used the words that the God he saw was “high and lofty,” “seated on a throne.”
It may be that earlier that morning Isaiah had been worrying about the world events of his day. He had heard of the conquests of Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria. Could little Judah’s young king, Jotham stand up against mighty Assyria?
But then he had a vision of his God. The vision happened in the temple in Jerusalem, maybe the biggest building in the city. But the God that he saw was so big, that just the hem of his robe filled the whole temple. If the hem of his robe, down by his ankles, filled the temple just how big was this God? How big was his throne? I think Tiglath-Pileser III looked a lot less scary when Isaiah realized the power of his God. For all of us, our problems can look awful big when we let them fill our minds. But spend some time looking at the majesty of our God and everything will look different. He is majestic.
Isaiah saw that God is transcendent. Whatever we think we can figure out, God is always more. In verse 2 we read that he was surrounded by these strange creatures, Seraphs. This is the only time we find them mentioned in the Bible. All it tells us is that they had 6 wings and flew.
God is transcendent; he exists in a way that is far above anything we can comprehend. The Bible tells us many wonderful, true things about him. But there is always more. The temple was filled with smoke so Isaiah couldn’t see God with total clarity.
We so easily try to domesticate God, just fit him comfortably into our daily humdrum life. We keep things simple, routine and under control. And if God wants to protect that for us, make it go more smoothly, that’s great. And we try to put this incredible, awesome God into a comfortable little box that we can take out and pet when we feel like it.
And when we do that our hearts and our lives are narrow and boring and without passion. When was the last time that your heart was really stirred by the wonder that God is right here? The God who created all things, who fills all things, who knows all things is here in this sanctuary right now. He is beautiful. He is huge. He is awesome.
Our world needs to hear that there is more to life than just going through the motions of earning money, raising our kids, caring for our homes. All of creation is alive with the transcendent wonder of God. And when we open our hearts to that wonder we are made new.
Then in verse 3, and most powerfully, Isaiah saw that God is holy. And in case he missed it, the seraphs were shouting it out back and forth to one another, overwhelmed by how holy God is. Even they had to cover their eyes because the holiness of God was just too penetrating. There is nothing dishonest in this God. There is no injustice, no bigotry. This God is nothing but pure love. He wants nothing but the very best for his creation. God is holy. And the seraphs said it three times, “holy, holy, holy” to say, he is really, really, really holy.
The idea of holiness is separation from all that is unclean, all that is unworthy, all that is morally wrong. A holy life is a life with boundaries, that there are a whole lot of things that you just don’t do. And we live in a culture that seems just determined to trample over all boundaries, to try everything, to honor everything. And how is that working out for us?
God said that marriage is sacred. It is an opportunity for us to get a taste of the wonder within the godhead of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, living in complete unity, total love and commitment and self giving. It’s one of God’s greatest gifts to us. Marriage is a place where we can experience raising children together, becoming creators of life just like our God and experiencing that incredible love that you feel for your children and giving them the incredible love that God has for us, his children.
How are we treating marriage today? It is being profaned. It’s treated like just one of many options. Among young women in America today more children are born outside of marriage than in. And that has to break God’s heart. And we think that we are so modern that we can redefine marriage so casually, but we are paying a terrible price as so many children grow up without the support of both a father and a mother and so many single moms are so stretched trying to do it all alone and so many children are growing up in poverty because it is so hard for a single parent to survive economically. God is a holy God. He wants the best for us and when we feel like we can treat his ways casually we pay the price. .
And verse 5 tells us that when Isaiah saw God for who he really was, he was shaken. When we open the eyes of our hearts to accept the holiness of the God who made us, everything looks different.
And what did Isaiah say when he had his encounter with this holy God? Say it with me. He said, “"Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
Isaiah felt ashamed of himself when he saw the holy God. And that’s no fun. Today we really work to always feel good about ourselves. We really work to avoid feeling guilty. But if we are really going to be adults, if we are really going to be honest, then we need to take responsibility for the times when we do wrong. And if we put all our energy into rationalizing our sins, into feeling good about ourselves whatever we do, there will be no motivation to change and the world is going to keep going down.
When Isaiah dared to look at the holiness of God, in the light that shone from that God he also saw himself. And he didn’t like what he saw.
Now we like to say that the Old Testament is law and judgment and the New Testament is grace. But the New Testament starts with the preaching of John the Baptist and the core of his teaching was that everyone needed to repent, to turn away from their sins, to clean up their lives. And then Jesus started preaching and the core of his message was the same, “Repent.” That’s the beginning of life with God. It breaks us out of our complacency. It acknowledges we are not made to keep control of everything ourselves and it is really an insult to God to try. We need God.
For a moment it looked hopeless for Isaiah, but God took care of that. In verse 6 we read that as soon as Isaiah took responsibility for his sin, God sent one of the seraphs to touch his lips with a burning coal that cauterized the sin that his lips had expressed so many times. And God made him clean again.
That gave hope to Isaiah and it meant that there was hope for his nation and there is even hope for us. And in Isaiah’s vision there is no explanation of how it worked that his sins would be forgiven. It’s not until we read the New Testament that we find out the incredible steps that God took to make our forgiveness possible, the price that Jesus paid on the cross for our redemption. But this holy God is also a redeeming God, a merciful God, a forgiving God, and a God of second chances. And Isaiah experienced that cleansing and forgiveness that day.
But God’s forgiveness always comes with a calling. God doesn’t forgive us so we can just go on only thinking about ourselves. He forgives us to free us to live a life of service to others. In the New Testament the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians that we are saved “by grace”, our only hope is in God’s forgiveness, “through faith”, that we need to accept that forgiveness and let it change our lives, and God’s purpose in all of it is that we might live a life of “good works.”
And so, in verse 8, God’s call came to Isaiah, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And read with me Isaiah’s response. He said, "Here am I; send me!"
Isaiah opened his eyes to dare to look at the Holy God of Israel. The LORD had been in the temple every day when Isaiah visited there. The LORD had been in every street that Isaiah had walked down, every building Isaiah had entered. But on this day the heavens were opened and he saw the reality that fills the earth, our majestic, transcendent and holy God. And for a moment he felt totally ashamed and unworthy. But our God is also a merciful God, who will cleanse us and set us free from our sins. And he will call us to a life that is rich with meaning, that can make an eternal difference, filled with glory. And it can seem scary to follow that God at first. But when you see who it is that calls us, to follow him is a privilege. AMEN
