Sunday, April 6, 2025 PM

Well, good evening. Let's open our Bibles and turn to Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah chapter 6, we'll be reading verses 1 through 13 this evening. I sent Wesley around with a new handout, so hopefully you were able to grab one.

If not, we have some up here on the lectern. Let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for the day. I thank you for the word that you give us. Thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ, in whose light we read this text.

Father, I pray that you would shine his light into our hearts, that you would give us joy and hope, encouragement and peace. You would transform our lives, conforming us to your Son. We ask that you would do these things by the power of your Spirit.

We pray these things for the sake of Jesus.

Amen.

The Vision of Isaiah in the Throneroom

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 lie of coal, which he had taken with 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.

And 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 as we think about where Isaiah 6 is located in the overall message of Isaiah, it occurs in these sermons for a difficult present.

Syria is on the horizon, the superpower to be feared, and there is great concern. But of greater concern for Judah should be the state of their covenant transgressions, the state of their sin before the face of a holy God.

And that they should be thinking of him first, and him most, but they have forgotten him. And so we have the children of woe here in chapters one through six. And two questions, what hope is there? And we've seen hope, beginning of chapter two and chapter four of Isaiah show us the hope of Zion, the hope of God rebuilding a temple in the new covenant fashion, and there are other bits of hope scattered throughout the various passages of judgment, and we've seen those.

But after asking what hope is there, we ask what word is there? And God does have a word through his prophet, whom he commissions here in chapter six, and he sends him forth. Now chapter six, I think, falls into two separate points.

The first is the vision of the Lord in verses one through seven, and then the voice of the Lord in verses eight through 13. It's a bit of a interesting, fun thing for me. Isaiah chapter six, verses one through seven was the first sermon I preached over 20 years ago, and I had three points.

God is holy, he is holy, holy, and he is holy, holy, holy. So I try to keep close to the main theme of the text as best as I could. But coming back and looking at this passage, we see this vision where in the throne room in verses one through four, we see the magnitude of God's holiness, and we then recognize that that is a threat to Isaiah, who is a sinner, a creature before his creator, but then how that threat is removed in verses five through seven.

But I want us to give a little bit of thought this evening to the whole of the 13 verses, the main theme of what we're looking at in this chapter, and then just survey the main themes of the first seven verses.

We'll get into the details as the Lord allows in future lessons. But when we're thinking about the chapter as a whole, it stands together as a message. It's a composition in and of itself, like Isaiah chapter five is.

It's a little bit shorter, obviously, less detail here in chapter six than in chapter five. But if we're going to sum it up, it's this, that the thrice holy covenant Lord brings a word of judgment upon his children of woe.

When we hear that famous verse, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? Then I said, here am I, send me. What a famous verse. It is most often seen put upon the wall above the mission map in churches. It's the theme verse for missions conferences.

It's the verse across the banner very often on missionary newsletters and so on. When we begin to read the message that Isaiah is sent with, however, it should take us aback a little. Say, that doesn't sound like any missionary effort I've ever heard of.

I certainly haven't tried to support missionaries going out to make people deaf and blind and, in fact, quite the opposite. So in that sense, Isaiah six, although it is familiar in some ways, it can be unfamiliar in other ways.

It's even surprising. The word which threatens sinners and deadens their senses through his prophet, however, this begins with a vision of the Lord, something that Isaiah does see, and then finishes with the voice of the Lord.

You'll notice in verse 13, there's a promise. There's a promise of the seed. So there is yet hope within the word of judgment. There seems to be a concern about sin in Isaiah chapter six. This concern about sin is brought about by the view of the Lord as holy, holy, holy.

And we find Isaiah confessing his sin in a very distraught manner, thorough manner. He confesses his sin. This passage reminds us not only of the purity of God and thus our sinfulness, but also the power of God, his ability to save, because even throughout all of the judgment, God arranges things so that there would be a tenth left, a remnant left, and that though the tree be felled, there's a stump, and out of the stump will grow the new shoot.

And there's a lot of new covenant promises that are seen there. And the New Testament reaches back to this very passage in verse 13 and talks about the stump and the seed and the hope. So we should confess our sin, but also we should confess our Savior, right?

Not only the egregiousness of our sin, but the power of our Savior. And we recognize that without the word himself bringing us life, we would not find life in his word. When Isaiah shows up in the throne room and receives holy, holy, holy, he says, I'm done.

It's over. The whole earth is full of his glory, and I'm toast, right? Likewise, the word that Isaiah was to bring to the covenant breakers was going to shut the eyes, stop up the ears, to deaden all of the senses so that they would not understand, that they would not turn away from their sin.

It was going to harden them. But when Isaiah comes into view of the holiness of God, God brings a coal, a live coal from the altar to Isaiah. And in this symbol, in this vision, in this metaphor, Isaiah finds forgiveness, he finds cleansing, he finds life.

We are reminded that when in the holiness of God, before the brightness and the heat of a holy God, sometimes by God's grace, the heart melts, and sometimes in God's just wrath, the heart hardens. It's the difference between butter and cement.

What makes one one way and one the other way is entirely the grace of God. Now, when we look at verses one through seven, we find the vision of the Lord. And the first four verses are all about the throne room.

Now, there's a brief mention of King Uzziah dying, but we move very quickly past that. It is interesting, this is the first chronological notation in the book of Isaiah. The first five chapters, we're not really given a lot of historical detail.

We can kind of tell what era these sermons were given in, but Isaiah had a very long ministry, decades and decades of ministry. When we look at the first five chapters, we're not given any particular historical data to try to see when did these sermons, when were they preached, when were they given?

We don't quite know, but when we get to chapter six, verse one, we get our first chronological note in the year that King Uzziah died. But all the attention is on the Lord sitting on a throne. And it's interesting as also with other visions, heavenly visions, everything but the Lord himself in the throne room is described.

It happened the same way in Revelation. When John sees the throne room, he describes the throne, what's around the throne. He describes the interesting creatures in the throne room and all of the features of heaven.

But he never says what the person on the throne looks like exactly. Interesting, isn't it? We are reminded that God dwells in inapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. And yet somehow men have seen the Lord.

And then you'll remember that Jesus Christ is a manifestation of the glory of God. And didn't John see Jesus Christ in his glory in Revelation chapter one? And didn't he see Jesus Christ in Revelation five, the Lion of Judah, who was a lamb, who was slain, coming up to the right hand of the father.

And so this is a reminder that in order to come to the father, we have to come through the son. And every time we have God showing up in a personal way as a friend to Abraham, or as a friend to Moses, we have not just a theophany, not just an appearance of God, but more particularly, we may say a Christophany, an appearance of the second person of the Godhead, Christ, being the mediator in revealing God to man.

And so we have this vision in which the holiness of God is very much magnified, terrifies, terrifies Isaiah. He is genuinely under threat. How often we find men falling down before the glory of God like dead men.

Angels with the glow of heaven show up and men fall down as if they are dead, because the holiness of heaven is all over the angel, and they can't stand in the presence of a holy God. But the vision entails how the threat is removed with this live coal.

It's given and pressed to the lips of the sinful prophet who lives amongst a sinful people. So the holiness of the throne is answered by the cleansing from the altar. I want us to think about what happens with Isaiah in this vision on two levels.

One is we learn a lot about God and man in creation. We also learn about God and man in covenant. Isaiah's experience might be described as the quintessential human experience, one without which a person never truly realizes what it means to be human.

They are human, but they just don't truly understand it. Happiness and sorrow, romance and heartbreak, health and sickness, birth and death are all interwoven into the painting and into the novel, into the film and into the poem to try to give expression to those deep themes of humanity.

Here's what it means to be human. But until the creature stands naked before the blazing holiness of the creator, the touchstone remains untouched. Still human, truly made in the image of God, but not genuinely understanding what that means or made in God's image.

Do we know what that means? Not until we, by God's grace, come face to face with him. Isaiah stands where Adam stood. In this moment, in this time, Isaiah stands where Adam stood. The place where no trees can hide, no fig leaves can cover, no excuse can survive.

To stand there is to not stand at all and to have need of someone else to stand in. And God provided that. God provided that, not by animal skins and soothing aromas, not by lambs and rams and turtle doves.

He sent his son, Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, to stand in as, what was his name, the son of man, to stand in as the quintessential human for us and for our salvation. So it is in Christ's righteousness, by Christ's merit, due to his intercession, for his inheritance, and with his name, we stand welcome as creatures before the face of the creator.

And so the coal, the live coal, comes from the altar to Isaiah. And there we see the need for Christ. There is no self-actualization. A little pop psychology term. Why? Because we are derived creatures.

We depend on God. In him, we live and move and have our being. There's no, there's no, we can't pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We can't make ourselves be fully aware of our humanity. We are entirely dependent upon our creator.

We live as those made in God's image. By the grace of God, when we are fully confronted with his holiness, mediated savingly by Christ, this is what we need. Temptation abounds in pride to save ourselves.

This is what Israel was really looking for. Solutions. Solutions to problems.

All right.

We have an Assyrian problem. Oh, now we're going to have a Babylonian problem. Well, I have an Egypt solution. All right. We're going to bribe Egypt to be our solution. Okay, we've got massive threats.

So we're going to upgrade our fortifications and our ability to get fresh water even under siege. So we're going to meet the threat of a siege with these solutions. There we saved ourselves. The temptation abounds in pride to save ourselves.

Adam and Eve made fig leaf coverings and hid themselves in the trees. That was their solution. Cain protested his plight and then protected himself by building a city. His descendant Lamech was typical of the antediluvians, those who lived before the flood, and that he killed all possible threats and then bolstered his reputation with violent boasts.

Noah's descendants tried to build for themselves a tower that reached to the heavens and made it, tried to make it waterproof and tall enough to save themselves from the next flood, even though God said he wasn't going to do that anymore.

Lot surrounded himself with prosperity. Jacob surrounded himself with schemes. The temptation to save ourselves is strong, but relying on God's promise to save through the seed, Genesis 3, 15, Genesis 15, 5 through 6, talking to old Abram who had no heir, Isaiah 6, verse 13, the promise of the seed, to rely on God to bring the seed, that seems weak and foolish.

And so, to the promise was added the law, so that the folly and ruin of Adam's transgression would be amplified in the transgressions of the covenant. Brought before the face of God and the trappings of the covenant, all the sinner may say is, woe is me, I am undone.

And it's important for us to read about Isaiah and his concerns in its covenantal context. We read that the king is dead and that the king is on the throne, and we read that the throne is in a temple, where else?

Not in a palace. This makes sense in the covenant language that God gave to Israel. Isaiah expresses his sin corporately. Do you see this? Woe is me, I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.

And so, he's anticipating that the wrath and judgment of God would justly fall upon him, not only for his own unclean lips, but also for the unclean lips of his people, that he would be judged for the sins of his people.

Do you hear that? That is a reminder that we're looking at the old covenant. Isaiah is sent to a single people. He's sent to Judah. He's not sent to the nations. There's one land in view, one land at stake.

Everything's dependent upon whether we get to stay in the land or not. You see all the focus in the text is on the old covenant. Isaiah is cleansing from the altar for living among a sinful people. His unenviable commission to dull hearts and stop ears and shut eyes until only a remnant remains must be read as God's old covenant arrangements.

So, we don't grab Isaiah chapter 6 and plug and play until today, meaning two things. One, we don't stand around and anticipate God's unhappy wrath upon me personally because of the sins of my neighbors, right?

God's not mad at me because I live in a sinful empire. That's old covenant. Also, I don't take the second half of Isaiah 6 and then do everything I can to offend everybody I preach to because that's the program.

I want everybody to be hard of hearing, to shut their eyes, and to turn away from the Bible because that's exactly what God sent Isaiah to do. See? But that was a judgment of God. That was a judgment of God upon his people according to his covenant curses.

So, a throne being in a temple, the seraphim in the smoke, the doorposts in the altar. All of this is reminding us of how God gave to Moses. Remember, God gave to Moses the construction instructions for the tabernacle, but these were merely the simplified copy of the holy and glorious realities in heaven.

We're told in Hebrews 9. Well, Isaiah has a vision of the real thing, but Moses only ever got the simplified copies. Isaiah knew by everything in him and everything given to him that he was undone. Now, when we went through Isaiah chapter 5 in verses 8 to 23, we had the sevenfold woe.

Woe, woe, woe.

And now to hear Isaiah say it of himself is very striking, especially after you think so much about the woe of chapter 5. For Isaiah to say it of himself really gets our attention. Woe is me. Or in the Hebrew, oy vey.

Woe is me. The only answer for Isaiah comes from the altar, and it's good that our attention is.

There.

Think about Christ as this live coal that touches and takes away. Remember that Jesus, as he came, when he touched the leper, he didn't become unclean. He cleansed the leper. That's a total reversal of the old covenant.

The old covenant, you touch a leper, you get unclean. Jesus comes, he touches the leper, and the leper gets clean. Here comes the live coal. When Jesus touches sin, he cleanses it. He doesn't get sinful from touching sin, touching sinners.

That was one of the complaints of the religious teachers. You're hanging out with sinners. You're becoming impure. He's like, no, I'm here to save the sick. That's the great physician. As the lamb of God, he takes away the sin of the world.

God is faithful to the finished work of Christ, to the blood of his son, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us all of our unrighteousness when we confess our sins, a confession not unlike that of Isaiah's, where he was saying what God would say about his sin.

That's how we walk in the light. This is the encouragement of 1 John chapter 1. Well, so we think about the broad message here in Isaiah chapter 6, and I think there's three things that we could take away.

Humanity Before God and the Need for Christ

One, prove that you are human. Two, accept terms and conditions. And three, acknowledge and sign here. You may have seen those from time to time. Prove that you are human. Now, usually you click a box to prove that you're a human.

Or you try to pick all the buses or bicycles out of the pictures. Prove you are human. How do we prove that we're human? Is it just a puzzle? Is it just dexterity? This is one of the great needs of our day.

People don't know what a human is, and they wouldn't know how to prove it even if they.

Did.

But when we live before the face of God each day, when we live Coram Deo, as it is called, we live before the face of God each day, we're living as humans. Because we are made in his image. We're here to reflect his glory.

We're here to live in his light. And we can only do that if we have a mediator, the man of all mankind, Jesus Christ. How did it go in Genesis 2? God breathed the breath of life into Adam, and he became a living being.

How does it go in our salvation? The creator has breathed the breath of life, the Holy Spirit, into us so that we are regenerate. We are born again, a new creature in Christ's new creation. We prove that we are human.

How?

By living in communion with the triune God by every means of grace that he's provided. And accept the terms and conditions. There's nothing really easy and comfortable about Isaiah 6. It's unsettling, really, from the start to the end.

And just when you feel like you've hit a really interesting high point there in the middle, it all starts falling apart when Isaiah gets the details of his message. And even the bit of hope at the end comes after great devastation.

So there's very little easy or comfortable about Isaiah 6. We have trembling and fire and judgment. But communion with God, who is holy, holy, holy, is not really about ease. It's not really about being comfortable.

It's not about merriment. And we should know that beforehand. And we should know that now. We should embrace Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life as the only Savior. There are terms and conditions.

There needs to be an understanding of who God is and who we are before him and the one way to be right with God in Christ. And we need to acknowledge and sign here. This is about repentance. When we confess our sins, it's not about being comfortable.

It's about being comforted. And how may we be comforted? We may be comforted in seeing Jesus Christ as our Savior, agreeing with God about the nature of our sin and the need for Christ's death and resurrection.

You know, the really hard part about God's forgiveness and cleansing is actually going out and living that way. We tend to minimize, on the one hand, minimize our sin. It wasn't that bad in the first place.

Contextualize our sin. Well, if you were in my situation, it would have been the same thing, just as logical. We tend, or if we don't do that, we will maximize our sin. I'm the worst, I'm the worst possible in every category.

I've even got, solved Tarsus beat. Or we will exceptionalize our sin. No one has the unique collection of sin problems that I do. I'm so special, even Jesus can't really save me well. Now that's the tendencies that we have with our sin.

We'll either minimize it, contextualize it on the one hand, and that's kind of the excuse side of things, or we'll maximize it and exceptionalize it. But either way, we're thinking way too much of ourselves, way too much of ourselves.

And this will pop up by the way we handle other people's sins. Maybe we go around and minimize other people's sins because that's the way we handle ourselves. Maybe we go around and contextualize all their sins because we're used to making those excuses for ourselves.

Maybe we maximize everybody else's sin. We look at everybody askance, like you're the, you know, everyone's a Hitler, you know, everyone's a Hitler and a Stalin. Or maybe we exceptionalize our sin and we say, you know, all of, you know, we look at somebody and they say, well, they're just, they're just too sorry to save, too much of a bundle of problems.

And this can come through when we're not forgiving. This can come through when we're not forgiving. And part of that, as Jesus points out in Matthew chapter six, is our forgiving of others is very closely tied to our being forgiven.

How do we understand that we're forgiven? And then that informs how we forgive others. So there's no need to minimize, contextualize, maximize, or exceptionalize our.

Sin.

We can, along with Isaiah, acknowledge what? Woe is me. I am undone.

Why?

I'm a man of unclean lips. I'm a sinner. My eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Put your attention upon the Lord. And the more you make of the Lord, the more you will see your sin accurately. But the more you see of the Lord, the more you will know his salvation in full.

Put your eye to the Savior, make much of the Lord, and you will find a fullness for your forgiveness in the true weightiness that your sin needs to be forgiven. And also, you will know what it means to forgive others because you'll be making much of the Lord in your dealings with them.

All right. Well, let's close by singing the doxology together.