Isaiah Sees the Lord - Isaiah 6:1
Is 6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.
One of the most memorable devotions I ever heard, was given by Dick Dowsett of OMF at the UCCF (Students Christian Union) camp I attended at Keswick in England in August 1978. He spoke on the passage I have just read and I still remember some of it. I am also speaking on this because I have put Isaiah 6:1 at the top of my personal December newsletter.
In the Bible, meeting the Lord is the key to spiritual renewal of all kinds. Isaiah chh1-5 deals with the sins of Judah with many ‘Woes’. Isaiah speaks on the false religion in Judah in the name of Yahweh; he speaks on the social injustices present; and he makes very direct observations on the fashions of the day. He warns the people of Judah that their lives were no different from those of the neighbouring nations, and that the coming of the Day of the Lord would not just sweep away their wicked neighbours but would sweep away Judah and Jerusalem as well.
Isaiah wasn’t wrong in what he said in Is 1-5 about the sins of Judah. It was true. It was inspired, they were the eloquent words from a gifted poet and preacher – probably the greatest poet who ever lived. But after seeing the Lord high and lifted up in the temple, Isaiah, righteous in his generation though he was, had caught sight of his own spiritual need in the presence of a holy God. He realised that he too was a person of unclean lips. The lips that had recently spoken the inspired words of God. The hand that had a finger pointing to the sins of Judah, had 3 fingers pointing back at himself.
We know from a comment in John ch12 that Isaiah’s vision in the Temple Isaiah ch6 was a vision of the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ in all his glory. Isaiah realised how holy the Lord is. Even the holy, perfect angelic beings, the cherubim and seraphim, which accompany the glorified Lord forever in the heavenly places – even they had to cover their faces and their feet in the presence of the Lord – as they cried out his name in worship. When I read passages like that I realise that my own relationship with God is very, very casual even on my supposedly better days.
And what to do about Isaiah’s unclean lips? There was a solution – the coal from the altar – where the sacrificial lamb was burned and sacrificial blood poured out. That solution to our unworthiness for service of course remains to us, the shed blood of Christ crying out for repentance and faith and giving cleansing.
For twelve or thirteen of you this will be the last time I ever have the chance to speak to you as you set out into a lifetime of Christian service. The ministry of Isaiah was proclaiming – both in poetry and preaching – the word of God. But Isaiah discovered when he entered the holy presence of the Lord that even his ministry of speaking inspired words was symbolically tainted with sin. So it is with our own ministries, even though we might think that we are doing well with natural and spiritual gifting in ministry. I suspect that Isaiah was a celebrated figure in his day and may have had reason to be self-confident. A celebrated poet, member of the royal family. But all that spiritual reputation was swept away that year that King Uzziah died and he had to fall back on the righteousness received from the coals on the altar. The righteousness of the Christ, whose cleansing power Isaiah would without realising it, go on to explain in his prophecies in the Servant Songs and elsewhere. He spoke words of truth because he had already experienced beforehand the cleansing of Christ.
When true Holy Spirit renewal comes, we aren’t going to blow up, but every shred of self-righteousness will fall out of our world, and Jesus pours in his own righteousness through the shed blood of Christ on the cross. It didn’t just happen to Isaiah. It happened to Jacob as he wrestled all night with the mysterious man; to Elijah on the mountain; to Moses on more than one occasion and famously to Saul on the Damascus Road. All their pride and self-righteousness was swept away.
In a few minutes, we will be praying for our graduating students as a college – and rightly so. We will probably pray for very practical issues – like accommodation, finances, visas, unborn babies, wedding arrangements etc. These are all valid and right. But my prayer for the graduates is that firstly they will catch a fresh vision of the holiness of Christ. If Isaiah needed it – I am certain that you and I do. And secondly that they will learn to draw on the coals off the altar for their righteousness – on the finished work of Christ on the cross, and not on their achievements in Christian work.
… That your ministries will be: Christ-centred, Christ-glorifying and not self-glorifying; Spirit-led and not self-led. Don’t judge yourself by external things. I believe that for all our faults, the ministry of this college and staff have set you a good example to you of trusting and leaning into Christ.