Sunday, July 6, 2025 PM

Isaiah’s Vision of the Holy One and the Seraph’s Coal

6. 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 inhabitant, 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 are finishing up the first seven verses, the portion here where we see the vision of the Lord, and of course in seeing the Lord, Isaiah is greatly affected given his uncleanness and given the fact that God is so holy.

This is an incompatible arrangement, Isaiah knows something has got to give, and it is going to be him. The Lord is going to remain holy, and Isaiah, being unclean in the presence of the Lord, knows he is the one who is in danger.

And so he has prophesied his own doom, what was me, I am ruined, or meaning I am destroyed, and he confesses, I am a man of unclean lips, I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the Lord of hosts, the King of glory, and so he is confessing this, he knows he is in trouble, and then God sends the seraphim with a coal, a coal from the altar, something that this holy creature, whose voice is powerful enough to shake the pillars of the doorway, cannot even touch it with his own hands from the altar, but must use tongs to remove it, and then brings it to Isaiah, and now we are looking at the cleansing by means of this coal in verse 7.

Verse 7 again, and he, meaning the seraph, touched my mouth with it, and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged. Here is the solution to Isaiah's problem.

Here is salvation for the damned. The manner in which the salvation is applied is significant as we think about the Lord being Israel's true Redeemer, which is the theme of these first 12 chapters of Isaiah.

So, the first part of the verse is focusing on the grace and mercy of the Lord, and the second part stresses the forgiveness that God provides. So, first of all, look at this focus where he touched my mouth with it, and said, Behold, this has touched your lips, and ever as I think it's Isaac watching his father's knife heading for his heart, Isaiah in the same way is beholding the flaming coal rushing at his face.

As we said before, the holiness of God is being stressed in the smoke that fills the throne room. The fiery, blazing holiness of God is a threat to Isaiah, so a live coal coming at him in the hand of a fiery, burning one, the seraph, is completely in agreement with the idea that Isaiah has just prophesied, I am destroyed.

You know, if a sinner says, I am a great sinner and deserve to die, and a lightning bolt heads his way, everyone expects a certain outcome, don't we? But when the fiery coal comes, we find salvation, not destruction.

The emphasis here is his mouth being touched with the flaming coal. It has touched his lips, and you may wonder what he felt, and what he smelled, what he heard as a burning cinder fills his face. You may imagine that he lost all his breath in terror, but you may wonder what is the point of the seraph telling the prophet, behold, or see, pay attention now, or in the King James, lo, I trust you've noticed that this fiery piece of wood that has touched your lips?

Yes, of course he noticed. It would be very hard to miss that. That was filling his entire attention. He was very focused on the fact that this fiery coal just came right into his face, and touched him on the lips.

The seraph didn't have to tell him what had just happened. He knew what just happened, but has he understood the meaning of it? Did he really meditate on it, understand what happened just now? Isaiah has confessed his unclean lips.

Well, guess what? Those lips have been addressed. His concern about his unclean lips, this intersection of all this impurity and uncleanness in his life, that has now been addressed in terms of forgiveness by means of the live coal from the altar.

So the seraph says, behold, this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, your sin purged. So there's two related blessings. First, we have the iniquity taken away. You may render this that Isaiah's iniquity flees.

It runs away. The warrant for woe, where Isaiah says, woe is me, the warrant for his woe has now just gone up in flames. His guilt worthiness has evaporated in the heat of the coal. The heat has made him holy.

To put it another way, the fire has made him non-combustible. This is the mercy. This is the forgiveness of God. There's a purging of his sin. So, first of all, it says your iniquity is taken away. Look at your sin is purged.

Your sin is purged. Now, the picture of sin, I think, is very famously rendered in Isaiah 53 verse 6. All we like sheep have gone astray. It's the basic word picture of sin in the Hebrew. Gone, going astray, moving off the mark, moving away from where we ought to be.

We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. And so it's here, the live coal from the altar purges. In other words, in the Hebrew word, means to cover, meaning to atone for Isaiah's sin.

And the term speaks of covering, not a cover-up. How often today is sin addressed by a cover-up? And the cover-ups can happen different ways. Those who see the sin and note the problem are told you didn't see what you saw.

It doesn't mean what you think it means. The fact that you see a problem means that you are the problem, right? All the gaslighting tricks in the world. Or somebody does something wicked and evil and then those around know that there's gonna be fallout that hurts them, so they cover it all up and everybody moves on like nothing happened.

That is not what this covering means. This is cover in terms of covering the cost. We would have the expression in our vernacular, I'll cover it. Meaning what? I'm picking up the tab. I'll pay for that.

I'll cover it, right? That's the meaning of this cover in the Hebrew, has an idea of paying the appropriate price so that the debt is settled. What is owed has now been provided. It's covered in that way.

So this is the assurance that Isaiah receives by this live coal coming and cleansing him that his iniquity, his guilt-worthiness has been taken away and his sin has been atoned for, covered, forgiven.

Now we need to think about the surprising nature of what has just occurred here in the vision. And this verse 7 really kind of brings us to the end of that first section where it begins with Isaiah beholding the holiness of God, being greatly affected by that, and yet God making provision for Isaiah to remain in his presence and welcome to his face.

And then following that we have the famous, whom shall we sin, who shall go for us, and then Isaiah responding in verse 8 and following. So verse 7 really is taking us to the end of this first section.

It is, together with verse 8, the middle, very important climax of the chapter. And it should really get our attention, especially as we think about Isaiah's original audience. Now we keep on coming back to that first half of verse 1 in the year that King Uzziah died.

And we remember why Uzziah died. Improper temple procedures, right? Uzziah tried to go into the temple and burn incense, which was not for the king to do. He did it wrong. He went into the temple and did the process wrong.

It was the wrong person doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. And Aaron's sons died for that kind of stuff. And here Isaiah is in the temple up in heaven. And we ought to take note of the order of things happening there.

And let's be as surprised as Isaiah's original audience. The manner of Levitical purity and holiness in worship is stated very clearly in the Old Covenant. Let's take a look at Exodus chapter 30 verses 17 through 21.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, you shall also make a laver of bronze with its base also of bronze for washing. You shall put it between the tabernacle of meeting and the altar. And you shall put water in it.

In verse 19, for Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet in water from it when they go into the tabernacle of meeting or when they come near the altar to minister to burn an offering made by fire to the Lord.

They shall wash with water, note, lest they die. So they shall wash their hands and their feet lest they die. It shall be a statute forever to them, to him and his descendants throughout their generations.

So what's the criteria here for priests, for Levites doing temple things regarding the altar, regarding the tabernacle? Purify before entering, right? You need to wash the uncleanness off your hands. You need to wash the uncleanness off your feet before you start doing any kind of sacrificing, before you start doing your work in the tabernacle.

You have to get rid of that uncleanness before you do these things, otherwise you're going to die. So when Isaiah, before the face of God in the throne room in heaven, the temple in heaven, is saying, woe is me, I'm unclean, this is what's in the background.

And he's focused on his lips as the intersection of all uncleanness, as we've talked about. So he just recognizes, I'm unclean, I'm here in the holy presence of God, that means I must die. This means that I am undone, I am as good as dead.

And when you put this together with Leviticus 22, of course remember what was the number, I think 87 times Leviticus uses the word unclean. It's a very big focus on uncleanness in Leviticus. But when you put this together with Leviticus 22 verses 1 through 3, we see another dynamic regarding the same theme.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and his sons that they separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, that they do not profane my holy name by what they dedicate to me, I am the Lord.

Verse 3, say to them, whoever of all your descendants throughout your generations who goes near the holy things which the children of Israel dedicate to the Lord, while he has uncleanness upon him, that person shall be cut off from my presence, I am the Lord.

So you see this, Isaiah in the presence of God has his uncleanness on him, and he's in the presence of God, and so now what should happen to him? He should be cut off forever before God. Now, how did somebody become unclean in the life of Israel, in the old covenant?

How did somebody like Isaiah, or one of the priests, or one of the regular folks, how did they become unclean? Didn't take much, just living. Yeah, it would come because the way someone became something clean, or someone clean, became unclean was by coming into contact with uncleanness of some sort, right?

You remember 2020, right? If you didn't wear a mask, you were unclean, and if you got near somebody else, anybody, you were unclean. If you didn't stand on little stickers on the floor, you were unclean.

We reverted to Old Covenant hard in 2020. It gives itself appreciation, kind of what it was like growing up in the wilderness. But in Leviticus 5 verse 2, listen to that, listen to how you become unclean in the Old Covenant.

Leviticus 5 verse 2, or if a person touches any unclean thing, whether it is the carcass of an unclean beast, or the carcass of unclean livestock, or the carcass of unclean creeping things, and he is unaware of it, he shall also be unclean and guilty.

Or if he touches human uncleanness, whatever uncleanness with which a man may be defiled, and he is unaware of it, when he realizes it, then he shall be guilty. Or if a person swears, speaking thoughtlessly with his lips to do evil or to do good, whatever it is that a man may pronounce by an oath, and he is unaware of it, when he realizes it, then he shall be guilty in any of these matters.

And it shall be when he is guilty in any of these matters, that he shall confess that he has sinned in that thing, and he shall bring, notice, he shall bring his trespass offering to the Lord for his sin which he has committed.

A female from the flock, a lamb, or a kid of the goats is a sin offering, so the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin. So all you got to do to become unclean is to come in contact with something unclean, or you don't get your words right, all of a sudden you're unclean.

And what do you do if you're unclean? You've got to bring a sacrifice to the altar so that it can be sacrificed for you, and that you can come back under the heading of clean. What happens in Isaiah 6?

How much just happens backwards in Isaiah 6, given the old covenant standards? In a remarkable reversal of approach, the unclean, here Isaiah, the unclean is in the temple courts, and he's got in there without becoming clean first.

And he didn't have a sacrifice to bring with him. He said his issue was unclean lips. Well, there in Leviticus 5, if he has unclean lips, he's supposed to bring a sacrifice with him to offer to the Lord by the hands of a clean priest.

No clean priest here, no sacrifice here, just a man with unclean lips in the presence of God. He's in trouble. But notice that the clean, the seraph, takes the live coal from the altar, puts it in his hand, and then brings it, brings the clean live coal, the holy coal, to the unclean man, Isaiah, and touches Isaiah.

And the unclean does not make what is clean unclean. Follow me. The clean makes the unclean man clean. You see the reversal? This is the same reversal that happened with Jesus. When he came, preaching the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and he touched the lepers, and that didn't make Jesus unclean, it made the lepers clean.

Right. When Jesus came into contact with the demon-possessed, that didn't make Jesus unclean, but he cast the unclean spirits out of them. Do you see the great reversal that we see in the life of Christ?

We see here in the vision that Isaiah had in the throne room. He brings nothing with him to offer upon the altar. Something is brought from the altar to the sinner. Something is provided for the sinner who stands there with nothing to offer for himself.

And we can even see something here even more fundamentally significant. The instructions in Lydicus 5 say, okay, man of unclean lips, you've got to pick yourself up and take yourself to the temple, but in this vision, God has brought the heavenly temple to Isaiah.

Isaiah didn't have to go to the temple. God brought it to Isaiah. Now, all of these reversals should really grab our attention, especially in the light of the context of Isaiah, where Judah, who's in this covenant relationship with God, has so utterly failed that God is bringing his judgment upon them, but at the same time telling them, there is salvation in none other.

You must look to me. And the pictures of salvation that he shows, either in Isaiah 2, or Isaiah 4, or Isaiah 6, all have to do with a new covenant and a new way of God relating to sinners. Using the very same pictures of the covenant, but then casting them in a manner of mercy and grace that is meant to, I think, overwhelm and surprise with the mercy of God.

Of course, the issue is, for those made in God's image, the issue is death. In the day that you eat of the fruit of the knowledge, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

Death in the Bible does not mean non-existence. Death always means separation. In the most basic sense, our death is the separation of the inner man from the outer man. The spirit lives on, the soul lives on, but the body is laid to rest.

There's a separation. Death is a separation. Death of a relationship is a separation, a cutting off from God. But the dead cannot make themselves alive. And the issue, for those made in God's image, the issue is sin.

But sin is intensely corrupting, so that the wicked cannot make themselves holy. The issue for Adam and Eve was shame. They covered themselves with fig leaves, they were hiding in the trees, they were trying to make excuses, doing whatever they could to shed the blame, but the shameful cannot find cover.

The guilty cannot find righteousness. The haunted cannot rest. So, what does God do? Christ is brought to us. Christ is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave his son as the propitiation for our sins.

The order of everything suddenly is in reverse, and so what was familiar and laid down has now all tumbles together in grace as Christ has given to us. Everything in the fallen creation story amplified in the Old Covenant system is reversed as the clean touches the unclean, as the sacrifice is brought for the sinner to the sinner, that God comes down to save, rather than visiting for judgment.

How often does God visit? In the Hebrew word for Picard, God's visitations are always judgment, except now in Christ he comes and there is salvation. And the exile, all those who are cast out and cut off from God, this massive exile is replaced with an advancing kingdom of, now you're in, now you're in, now you're in.

So, this is the promise of the New Covenant and the new creation in Christ. So, what hope is there? What word is there? Whether we're looking at Isaiah, the brightest part so far of Isaiah chapters 2 and 4 and 6, there is a stress upon a new covenant or a new creation.

The Command to Behold and the Answer to Woe

So, when the seraph tells Isaiah, pay attention, okay, when he says in verse 7, behold, this is the first imperative, the first command in the whole chapter. So far, it's been simply a matter of Isaiah responding to the holiness of God, but he's been commanded nothing.

No instructions have been given to him until now. And all that he's been told now by the seraph is, look, behold, or in the King James, low. But the answer to woe is low. How often do even the saints live in woe?

We get caught up with ourselves, we get caught up with our troubles, we get caught up with our own failures, our own weaknesses, our own sins, our own tiredness, our own inabilities, failures in the past, fears of the future, and we can get to the point where we think possibly our problems are so unique and so difficult that not even God himself can help us.

But the answer to low is, or the answer to woe is low. Pay attention, look, behold. Anytime Isaiah would doubt his standing in his calling or doubt his ability and duty to preach the message that God sent him to preach, anytime that Isaiah may say to himself, can I really say this or should I really say this?

Who am I to say these things? I should just be quiet. Anytime the woe should start taking over, then he should remember the live coal, the flaming cinder all in his face, touching his lips, his iniquity fleeing away, his guilt purged, his sin purged.

The answer to woe is low. We are to think upon Christ and to meditate upon Christ and to plead Christ in those moments. Let's close by singing the doxology together.