Sunday, April 13, 2025 PM

Isaiah’s Throne Room Vision and the Lord’s Holiness

Alright, let's open our Bibles and turn to Isaiah chapter 6, we'll be reading verses 1 through 13 in a moment. Isaiah chapter 6, and let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day, we thank you for your love for us, we thank you for your faithfulness in every season.

We thank you for your many blessings that we have in Christ, and we pray that you would help us to see him in our text this evening, and rejoice in his truth. We pray these things in his name. Amen. Okay, Isaiah chapter 6.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim, each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew, and one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.

And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.

Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I, send me. And he said, Go, and tell this people. Keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.

Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed. Then I said, Lord, how long?

And he answered, Until the cities are laid waste, and without inhabitants. The houses are without a man, the land is utterly desolate. The Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

But yet a tenth will be in it, and will return and be for consuming, as a terebinth tree or as an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down. So the holy seed shall be its stump. So we're talking about chapter 6 in Isaiah, and how it fits in with these early sermons for a difficult present.

We are reminded that we're still looking at the children of woe that we were introduced to in chapter 1. Children who are so rebellious, they have forgotten their father. And children who have been loved for and cared for as a vinedresser would a vineyard.

An expert vinedresser, a generous vinedresser, who did every possible thing to ensure success. And yet the vineyard brought forth wild grapes instead of good grapes. And these rebellious children, who are so far gone that they don't even remember that they have a father.

Who are filled with, their lives are filled with transgressions of the covenant. And so their future is filled with the woe of God upon them. The question is, after considering what hope there may be for them, now we're thinking what word is there?

What does God have to say to them through his prophet Isaiah? And we discover that the thrice holy Lord, their covenant Lord, brings a word of judgment upon his children of woe. And yet it is one that is laced with hope.

A picture of forgiveness from the altar. A promise that a remnant will remain, and there's a holy seed that will come. So when we look at chapter 6, we see it falling into two sections. The vision of the Lord in verses 1 -7, where Isaiah has this throne room vision, and then the interaction with the angel and the altar.

Verses 1 -7 is the vision. And then we get the message from the Lord, the voice of the Lord, in verses 8 -13. So last time we did an overview of the first seven verses of chapter 6. And considered the larger themes involved in these verses.

The Lord High and Lifted Up Above Earthly Kings

So now we want to pay attention to the throne room in verses 1 -4. And give it some consideration. And we hear the historical notation in the year that King Uzziah died. So now we have a particular time that Isaiah's message comes.

In the first five chapters of Isaiah, we are not given any historical notations. And so they definitely address Israel, Judah to be proper. Judah in the days of Isaiah. Judah with the threat of Assyria.

Judah with the threat of Babylon. But they're a bit timeless in their address of Israel. These messages could fit several different times in Israel. But when we come to chapter 6, we get a very specific notation.

The year that King Uzziah died. And after a brief mention of King Uzziah, we immediately are looking at the Lord. The Lord sitting on a throne. The Lord high and lifted up. The train of His robe filling the temple.

And what about those who attend Him in this mighty throne room? Well, above the throne stood or stayed were positioned seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face. With two he covered his feet.

With two he flew. And so they are not to be thought of as literally standing because they're flying. They are in position though. They're not moving about. They're in position. And the dynamic is they're flying, covering their face, covering their feet.

And one is saying to another, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts. Remember that the Lord of Hosts is the name Yahweh Sabaoth, meaning He's in charge of all the hosts. The hosts of the stars and the hosts of the grasshoppers.

All the hosts of men and all the hosts of planets. It doesn't matter what's there and all the creatures that He made and all the creations He's made. He's in charge of it all. And so the corollary to Lord of Hosts is this.

The whole earth is full of His glory.

Holy, Holy, Holy.

The earth is full of His glory. And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of Him who cried out and the house was filled with smoke. So we are invited to meditate here on an overwhelming contrast.

And it's a contrast that has real and even terrifying implications. Almost the entirety of this passage is about the Lord as king. And that's well enough. It's good to have a passage all about the Lord as king.

But you see that His glory is intentionally contrasted with another king. With a lesser king by the name of Uzziah. And you'll notice that Uzziah is hardly mentioned. He's a footnote. He's barely there.

And in fact, he's not there. He's dead. Now that's a contrast. Look how much greater and grander the Lord is than King Uzziah. Now, King Uzziah was no slouch. If you read about his history in the Old Testament, he was a pretty effective king.

Bold, strong, and the nation had some really good years under King Uzziah. So he's not a nobody. He's not one of those kings who reigned for two months and got assassinated. He was a real important king of Judah.

But he's just barely mentioned here. He's only mentioned in the fact that he is dead. That's quite a contrast. The lesser king, who is not there, contrasted with the Lord as king, who is all there. And you feel the imbalance of it.

And in the imbalance, we're taught something. We see the fullness of the eternal and overwhelming glory of God as the creature is contrasted with the creator. How much more greater is God? How much more greater is the creator than the creature?

We should sit up and take notice of that. Covenant shadows melt in the Lord's brilliant light, and so we should have regard for our mediator. How much we need a mediator when we see the glory of God. We recognize we need someone to stand in for us and to bring us safely near.

And we receive instruction about the worship of heaven. Look how worship is conducted in the throne. And are we not instructed by that about how we should give praise to God? What about this lesser king, the lesser king Uzziah?

When you read in the Old Testament, the very natural formula that we have throughout the Hebrew Scriptures is that, in the first year of king blank. That's the formula that we have throughout the historical writings.

In the first year of king whoever, and then this would happen and that would happen, and then we would know where we are in the story. But in this case, if we were to read in the first year of king, it would be king Jotham, Uzziah's son.

But we don't have the normal formula where it's in the first year of king Jotham. We're given an odd formula in the year that king Uzziah died. And so the spirit has the prophet Isaiah emphasizing emphasizing Uzziah's death 740 years before Christ.

And if all we had to rely on was this passage, we don't know very much about Uzziah just given this context. We just know that he was a king of Judah and that he's dead. That's all we're told. How little time is spent considering him.

The abruptness of the translation, you have it in the New King James, there's seven words. But the abruptness of the translation is even more pronounced in the Hebrew. There's just three words. There's one really effective Hebrew word that sounds like in the year that he died.

That's one word in the Hebrew, very efficient language. In the year that he died, king Uzziah. Just three words in the Hebrew. And that is part of the message. Isaiah will say a lot about the Lord. He will go to great detail in describing the glory of the Lord, but he's not going to say a lot about Uzziah.

Even though there was a lot to say about the man, just not here. Here, the great king is not great at all. He's a day flower already dead. He's a white smoky vapor dissipated. So where should the hope of Judah lie?

Jotham? Some other king? The hope of Judah is not even allowed to glimpse the next king in succession. It's just the death of Uzziah. And they shouldn't be looking at Jotham. They should be looking up to the one who reigns on the throne.

It's not a simple matter of the king is dead, long live the king. All these children of woe can do, all that they should do at the death of their king, is to humbly revere the greater king, the Lord, as their eternal king.

And that's what we find in the second half of verse 1 through verse 4. Isaiah says, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne. Now we're not told anything about the features of the Lord. We just hear that he's sitting on a throne.

Isaiah says nothing about his feet, his legs, his arm, his face. We're given no details about the so-called physical appearance of the Lord. We are reminded in this lack of description that God is a spirit and does not have a body like man.

God is a spirit. We have in the scriptures the Lord meeting Adam and Eve and meeting Abraham and meeting Jacob, appearing as a man, wrestling Jacob even. And we've talked about those theophanies before and the related man-shaped words that we call anthropomorphisms that God uses to reveal himself.

And in particular here we have an anthropomorphism, a man-shaped word that the Lord is sitting on a throne. He's sitting on a throne. And yet we know that the Lord has no need of resting while reigning.

He's not exerting himself. He's not losing energy. He has no need to look dignified throughout a long day, thus he has a throne. That is a man-shaped word, but it's intentionally selected by the Holy Spirit to communicate something to us about the glory of God, the power of God, the honor of God.

That the Lord sits on a throne, but we are not given any direct description of the Lord's physical appearance, that is anticipated by and fully in agreement with the instructions of building the Ark of the Covenant in Exodus 25.

The Mercy Seat, the Ark of the Covenant, and True Worship

Let's take a look at Exodus 25, verses 17 -22, and see the instructions that the Lord gave about the Ark of the Covenant. Now regarding the Ark of the Covenant, God gives instructions. You shall make a mercy seat.

A mercy seat. Now a seat is something you sit on, and so is a throne. So keep that in mind. There's a place for someone to sit. They're making a seat. You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two and a half cubits shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its width.

And you shall make two cherubim of gold. Of hammered work you shall make them at the two ends of the mercy seat. There are going to be two heavenly beings flanking this seat. They're going to be on either side.

Make a cherub at one end, and the other cherub at the other end. You shall make the cherubim at the two ends of one piece with the mercy seat. So it's all going to be one solid piece. And the cherubim shall stretch out their wings above, covering the mercy seat with their wings.

We're going to see a bit of a connection to the seraphim in the throne room that are above the throne room. They're not above the throne because they are more exalted than God, but they are standing there as attendants.

They shall face one another. Again, an echo of Isaiah. We find in Isaiah, one says to another. They're talking to one another about how glorious God is. The faces of the cherubim shall be toward the mercy seat.

You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark. So this is basically the lid, the top of the ark of the covenant. And in the ark, you shall put the testimony, that's the Ten Commandments, that I will give you.

And there I will meet with you. There I will meet with you. You see this? Where does he meet with them? At the mercy seat. I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the testimony about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel.

So this is, this mercy seat is understood as the throne of God in the life of Israel. And we'll find this being described in other parts of the Old Testament. So you'll notice in the description of that that all around the mercy seat is described, but the throne itself is apparently empty.

There's description of how big the mercy seat is and the cherubim, how they're to be constructed. And in the larger context, there's all manner of description about what is entailed in the architecture and the artifacts of the holy of holies and the holy place and the tabernacle, all of these descriptions, all these artistic descriptions are given.

And yet, for all of the gold images and finery of the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant, there was no icon, no image, no idol to behold and to worship. It was empty. And God says, I will meet you there.

I will speak to you there from above the mercy seat. You will not see him, but he will commune with him. Now, this is very much in agreement with Isaiah's vision when he's in the throne room of heaven and there is the throne and the Lord is sitting on the throne, but there's no description of his physical appearance.

Only all of that glory which is around him, which again is consistent with other passages in the scripture that we read where no man has seen God nor can see him, that he dwells in inapproachable light, and we see this time and again.

Even when we hear about the throne room in Revelation chapters 4 and 5, we have descriptions of the Messiah. We have descriptions of Jesus Christ. The lion of Judah who was a lamb standing as if slain.

We have the descriptions of Jesus Christ on the island of Patmos in Revelation chapter 1. Lots of descriptions of physical appearances when it comes to our mediator, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. But when it comes to a vision of God directly, God proper, God without human body, we are not given any physical description, which again is in agreement with how he instructed his covenant partners, Israel, to make no graven image of anything that they had ever experienced, anything they had ever seen, make no graven image and think that you can worship me through that graven image, whether it be a calf or a lion or anything like that.

Make no graven images. No icons. Now, Israel tended to forget this. Israel tended to want to be like the nations around them, and they wanted to be strong in battle. So do you remember when they seemed to be having a rough time with the Philistines?

Before, late in the days of the judges, before King Saul, when Samuel was only recently born, and the Philistines were attacking, and what did the people do? They tried to defend themselves and attack the Philistines, and they had a minor defeat.

So they said, let's go get the Ark of the Covenant. Now, there are some things interesting that they got right and they got wrong all at the same time. How often is this the case? To get something really wrong, you have to have some things really right.

1 Samuel 4, verses 2 through 4. Now, Israel went out to battle against the Philistines and encamped beside Ebenezer, and the Philistines encamped in Aphek. Then the Philistines put themselves in battle array against Israel, and when they joined battle, Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who killed about 4 ,000 men of the army in the field.

And when the people had come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Opportunity for repentance for these covenant members, right? But what do they choose instead?

Let us bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Shiloh to us.

Right?

They had a sense of its importance. It is the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. But then they say that, here's the purpose, that when it comes among us, it may save us from the hand of our enemies. So now here they're treating this precious artifact of the tabernacle as some sort of religious totem in and of itself, that this is going to be their God on the field to give them the edge over their enemies.

So the people sent to Shiloh that they may bring from there the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of Hosts, notice, who dwells between the cherubim. Now where did they get that idea? That's straight from Exodus.

We read that. So they're getting a lot right, but they're getting a whole lot wrong. And the two sons of Eli Hofti and Phinehas were there with the Ark of the Covenant of God, and they went out, and they had a defeat that was ten times as bad.

The Ark of the Covenant was taken away by the Philistines, and that was a very interesting story. So this is the height of folly. One does not haul around the Ark so as to conjure God and make him do things any more than Isaiah could have done anything in that throne room other than tremble and say, Reverence calls for a humble entreaty, a humble entreaty.

When we read about Hezekiah the king, and when they were surrounded by the Assyrian hordes, and things were looking very, very bad, when Isaiah and Hezekiah and the leaders of Jerusalem prayed to God to deliver them, they entreated the Lord who was enthroned between the cherubim.

They didn't get the Ark of the Covenant out and flash it out in front of the Assyrians like some sort of superstitious item, but they implored to the one who was on the throne that he would deliver them.

And once again, we're reminded the architecture and the artifacts of the temple and the tabernacle were but copies of the reality in the throne room of heaven. And while King Uzziah was dead, the throne room above all the thrones was still occupied.

God’s Ascendancy, Human Dominion, and the Last Adam

The Lord still ruled in power and glory, though the kings of his people were frail and died. And think first of all about these descriptions that we give. First of all, the ascendancy of God. He is high and lifted up, we read.

He is high and lifted up. Sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. And as thrones go in the Bible, in the conception that we have in the scriptures, as far as thrones go, the higher up they are, the more dominion they have.

It's a matter of metaphorical perspective. A king on a throne 1 ,000 feet in the air can see a whole lot farther than a king on a throne 10 feet in the air. And it's inherent to the nature of a king that wherever he can see ought to be his dominion.

That's part of being a king. If I can see it, it's mine. That's the nature of being a king. That's the problem when two kings see each other. Now it's time for a war. And this means that one king's throne that is very high up may see the dominion of other kings not so high up, but by ruling over them and conquering them, he becomes the king of kings.

The king of kings. And who occupies the highest throne of all? Isn't that God himself? Psalm 115 verse 3 says, Why should the nations now say, Where is our God? Our God is in the heavens, and he does whatever he pleases.

Our God is in the heavens. He's enthroned on high. He does whatever he pleases. He is the highest throne. And so God's ascendancy high and lifted up, that's what's being emphasized here in the wake of King Uzziah's death.

He's a lesser king, which was a lesson he should have remembered. You may remember how King Uzziah died. There's your homework. We'll come back to that. But the lesson that King Uzziah should have remembered was built into the architecture and even the topography of Jerusalem.

The king's palace and throne was lower. It was downslope from the temple where God's throne was located. You had to walk downhill to get from God's throne to Solomon's throne. You had to walk uphill to go from Solomon's throne to the throne room of God.

That was built into Jerusalem. A reminder to the king, hey, bud, there's a throne that is higher than your throne. Interestingly, you think about Adam and Noah and Abram. They were very much kings without the title.

Everywhere Adam looked, he was to have dominion. What about Noah when he gets off that ark? Everywhere he looks, his dominion. What about what God says to Abram in Genesis chapter 13? Didn't God make Abram a king in Genesis 13?

Lot and him split. Lot heads off to Sodom. But what happens? Genesis 13 verse 14,. Then the Lord said to Abram after Lot had separated from him,. Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are, northward, southward, eastward, westward.

For all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants could also be numbered.

Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you. So, a king by promise. Abram acts in faith on the promise, and you see him in the very next chapter in Genesis 14. What does he do but wage war against invaders in his land?

Why does Abram take up arms against Chedder-Lamor and the armies of the north, who took captive the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abimezeb, Umezor? Why did Abram go to war? Because God just gave him the whole land and said,.

It's all yours.

And so, invasion? Abram's like, Well, we have to respond. What was the very first test of Saul being an actual king? Philistine's invading. Saul says, Okay, I guess we have to respond. So, it's interesting to see that when it comes to thrones, God's throne is above all the other thrones.

And whatever dominion he gives to his servants are always underneath his dominion. Judean kings, David and Solomon, the patriarchs, and all of humanity have dominion by God's permission. His throne is above all.

Which is the background of the question that is asked in Psalm 8. Verse 3. When I consider your heavens and the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him?

And the son of man that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands.

You have put all things under his feet. You say, Well, I thought Adam messed all that up. Yeah, but the last Adam makes all that right. Which is what the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter 2. He says, This is Christ.

Let's close by singing the doxology together.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.