Isaiah 6

CHAPTER 6THEME: The call and commission of Isaiah to the prophetic officeChronologically, as well as logically, the Book of Isaiah begins with this chapter, which constitutes the crisis in the life of Isaiah and brings him into the prophetic office. Prior to this, we have no record of his life or relationship to God. His ministry began at the death of King Uzziah.

Isaiah 6:1

THE VISION OF THE LORD SEEN BY ISAIAHIn verses Isa_6:1-4 are the time, place, person, glory, and holiness of the Lord in the vision seen by Isaiah. Now notice the time, the place, and the person: Isaiah opens this chapter on a very doleful note taking us to the funeral of Uzziah. Uzziah has been a good king. Now he is dead. It is the belief of many that he was the last great king of the southern kingdom of Judah and that after his death the glory of the Lord was no longer to be seen. I am not sure but what that is true. Uzziah brought the Philistines, the Arabians, and the Ammonites into subjection. He had ruled for fifty-two years, and the nation had been blessed materially during that period according to God’s promise. As F. Delitzsch says, “The national glory of Israel died out too with King Uzziah and has never been recovered to this day.” I heartily concur with that statement. In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah is thinking, Good King Uzziah is dead, and things are going to the bowwows now. Israel will be taken captive. Prosperity will cease. A depression will come, and famine will follow. In that frame of mind Isaiah does what every person ought to dohe goes into the temple. He goes to the proper place, the place where he could meet with God. Psa_29:9 says, “…in his temple doth every one speak of his glory.” In God’s temple Isaiah makes the discovery that the true King of the nation is not dead. “I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple"God is on the throne. Isaiah has already told us not to put confidence in man, whose breath is in his nostrils. When man exhales, he doesn’t know for sure that he ever will be able to inhale again. A man can have a heart attack and die, just like that. Don’t put your confidence in man. Old King Uzziah is dead. Yes, it is true, and the throne looks pretty bleak right now, but behind the earthly throne is the heavenly throne. Isaiah sees the Lord sitting upon a throne. That is a vision that some of God’s people need in this day. I see no reason for being pessimistic. This is the greatest day in the history of the world. I would rather live right now than in any other period of time. Somebody says, “Oh, look at the terrible condition of the world. Look at our nation and the deteriorating condition in our cities.” Well, the Lord said it was going to be that way.

He said that tares were going to be sown in among the wheat. And He was going to let them both grow together. My business today is sowing the seed of the Word of God. I know that it is going to bring forth a harvest. And it is heading up todaythere is no question about that. We don’t need to be disturbed.

God will take care of the harvest. Our business is to sow the seed; that is, to get the Word of God out to needy hearts. This is a great day in which to live. Do you know that the Word of God is going out to more people than it ever has before? Even my radio broadcast is reaching more people in a half hour than I was able to reach in all my years of preaching behind a pulpit. And the message is going around the world! I realize the world conditions are alarming. The tares are really growing, but we have a good stand of wheat also. The wheat is growing right along. It is thrilling to be sowing the Word of God in this day! When Isaiah goes into the temple, he finds that the Lord is still on the throne. And some of us need to be reminded that God is still on the throne in our day. He still hears and answers prayers. He is still doing wonderful things. Isaiah also makes another discovery when he goes into the temple. He finds out that God is high and lifted up and that His train fills the temple. That is the second thing we need to discover about God. God is high and lifted up, and He will not compromise with sin.

Isaiah 6:2

Seraphim are around the throne of God. This is one of the few mentions of these created intelligences in Scripture. Practically nothing is known concerning them. Seraph means “to burn.” It is the word used in connection with the sin offerings and judgment. Apparently the seraphim are in contrast to the cherubim. The seraphim search out sin, and the cherubim protect the holiness of God. Never is the word seraph connected with the sweet incense or sweet savor offerings, those offerings which speak of the person of Christ. The seraph is active, and the cherub is passive. We will find both of them in the Books of Ezekiel and Revelation as the “living creatures.” The seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are protecting the holiness of God. He is “high and lifted up.” God will not compromise with evil. I thank Him for that. He will not compromise with evil in your life nor in my life, because evil and sin have brought all of the sorrows in this world. Sin is that which puts gray in the hair, creates the tottering step and the stooped shoulder. It is the thing that breaks up homes and lives and fills the grave. I am glad that God does not compromise with it.

God says that He hates sin and He intends to destroy it and remove it from this universe. Today our God is moving forth uncompromisingly, unhesitatingly, and undeviatingly against sin. He does not intend to accept the white flag of surrender from it. He intends to drive sin from His universe. That is what God says. He is high and lifted up.

My friend, you and I are going to have to bow before Him. When Isaiah saw God on the throne, it brought him down upon his face. Oh, how desperately the church needs another vision of God, not just of His love, but of His holiness and righteousness! Because God is holy, He moves in judgment against sinand He has never asked me to apologize for Him. So I won’t. God is angry against sin, and He will punish those who engage in it.

He says He will. He also says that He is your Friend and will save you. But you have to come His way. You have to put your faith and trust in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Joh_14:6 Jesus said, “…I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

Isaiah 6:3

This pictures the holiness and glory of our God. He is high and lifted up; and, if we would see Him today in that position, we would be delivered from low living. It would also deliver some folk from this easy familiarity that they seem to have with Jesus. They talk about Him as if He were a buddy and as if they could speak to Him in any way they please. My friend, you cannot rush into the presence of God. He doesn’t permit it.

You come to the Father through Christ. This is the only way He can be approached. You can never come into the presence of the Father because of who you are. You come into His presence because you are in Christ. The Lord Jesus made that very clear when He said, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” If you are His child, you can come with boldness to the throne of grace, but you cannot come to Him on any other basis.

Isaiah 6:4

“The voice of him that cried” is the voice of the seraphim as they proclaim God’s holiness. What effect is this going to have on Isaiah?

Isaiah 6:5

Isaiah was God’s man before he had this experience, but it still had a tremendous effect on him. The reaction of Isaiah to such a vision is revolutionary. He sees himself as he really is in the presence of Godundone. It reveals to him his condition. When he had seen God, he could see himself. The problem with many of us today is that we don’t walk in the light of the Word of God.

If we did, we would see ourselves. That is what John is talking about in the first chapter of his first epistle: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth [keeps on cleansing] us from all sin” (1Jn_1:7). If we walk in the light of His Word, we are going to see exactly what Isaiah sawthat we are undone and men of unclean lips. You have never really seen the Lord, my friend, if you feel that you are worthy or merit something or have some claim upon God. Job had an experience similar to Isaiah’s, and his reaction was, “I abhor myself.” Job was a self-righteous man. He could maintain his integrity in the presence of his friends who were attempting to tear him to bits. They told him that he was a rotten sinner, but he looked them straight in the eye and said, “As far as I know, I am a righteous man.” From his viewpoint he was right, and he won the match against them. But he was not perfect. When Job came into the presence of God, he no longer wanted to talk about maintaining his righteousness. When Job really saw who he was, he said, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.

Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job_42:5-6). If you walk in the light of the Word of God, you will see yourself, and you will know that even as a child of God you need the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse you from all sin. You will find that other men had the same reaction when they came into the presence of God. John, on the Isle of Patmos, wrote, “And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead …” (Rev_1:17). When Daniel saw the Lord, he said, “Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength” (Dan_10:8). That was also the experience of Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the apostle. After Paul met the Lord, he no longer saw himself as a self-righteous Pharisee, but as a lost sinner in need of salvation. He then could say, “But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (Php_3:7). He saw his need of Jesus Christ.

Isaiah 6:6

This “live coal” has come from the burnt altar where sin had been dealt with. In the next chapter we will see the prediction of the birth of Christ, but it is not the incarnation of Christ that saves us, it is His death upon the Cross. For this reason, Isaiah needs the live coal from off the burnt altar, which is symbolic of Christ’s death. This living coal represents the cleansing blood of Christ that keeps on cleansing us from all sin.

Isaiah 6:7

Isaiah is a man of unclean lips, and the condition for cleansing is confession: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1Jn_1:9). I believe it would be more accurate to say that this glowing coal is symbolic of none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the One high and lifted up on the throne, and He was the One lifted up on the Cross. It is absolutely essential that He be lifted up, because He came down to this earth and became one of us that He might become “…the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (Joh_1:29). And so the lips of this man Isaiah are cleansed. I take it that this act of putting the coal on his lips was just an external manifestation of what happened in the inner man. It is what proceeds out of the heart of a man that goes through the lips; and, when the lips are cleansed, it means that the heart is cleansed also. There was a man in the New Testament who also was “undone.” His name was Paul, and he cried out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom_7:24). When Paul said this, he was not a lost sinner but a saint of God, learning the lesson from God that he needed to walk in the Spirit because he could not live for God by himself. Living for God can only be accomplished by divine grace. Man’s responsibility is to confess his sinfulness and his inability to please God. Therefore, we need to have the redemption of Christ applied to our lives again and again and again. After Isaiah’s lips are cleansed, something happens:

Isaiah 6:8

It is interesting that up to this time Isaiah had never heard the call of God. I think many Christians have never felt like they were called to do anything for God because they have never been cleansed. They have not seen this great need as Christians. God is not going to use a dirty vessel, I can assure you of that. It is true that God does bless His Word even when it is given out by those who are playing around with sin, but in time God judges them severely. I don’t dare mention any names, but I have known certain ministers who for awhile enjoyed the blessing of God. Then they got into sin, and it wasn’t long until the judgment of God fell upon them. Isaiah heard God’s call: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” I don’t need to call attention to the fact that you have both the singular and the plural in this verse, and I believe it sets forth the Trinity. Isaiah’s response was, “Here am I; send me.” Isaiah heard God’s call for the first time and responded to it, as a cleansed individual will do. There are too many people today who are asked to do something in the church who first of all ought to get cleansed and straightened out with the Lord. They need to have their lips touched with a living coal. They need to confess the sins in their lives, because their service will be sterile and frustrating until that takes place. Now notice the commission to Isaiah:

Isaiah 6:9

The message Isaiah is told to give is very, very strange. “This people” means, of course, the nation of Israel.

Isaiah 6:10

At first glance it looks as if the prophet is being sent to those who are blind, deaf, and hardened people, but I think I can safely say that God never hardens hearts that would otherwise be soft. God simply brings the hardness to the surface; He does not make the heart hard. He does not make blind the eyes of those who want to see, but apart from His intervention they would never see. Nothing but the foolish blasphemy of men would say that God hardens or blinds. Isaiah’s job was to take a message of light to the people. Light merely reveals the blindness of the people. In darkness they do not know if they are blind or not. Mat_13:14-15 records the words of our Lord: “And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” Let me illustrate this. When I was a boy in Oklahoma, I used to have to milk a stubborn old cow. When it grew dark early in the evenings, I would have to take a lantern out to the barn with me. When I reached the corncrib two things would happen. The rats ran for coverI could hear them taking offand the little birds that were roosting up in the rafters would begin to twitter around and sing. The presence of light caused one to flee and the other to sing. Now, did the light make a rat a rat? No. He was a rat before the light got there. The light only revealed that he was a rat. When the Lord Jesus came into the world, He was the Light of the world. In His presence two things happened: He caused the birds to sing and the rats to run. Let me illustrate this same thought with another story. Years ago there was a big explosion in a mine in West Virginia, and many men were blocked off in the mine because of the cave-ins. After several days a rescue party dug through to the trapped men. And one of the first things they managed to get through to them was a light. After the light came on, a fine young miner said, “Why doesn’t someone turn on a light?” The other miners looked at him startled, suddenly realizing that he had been blinded by the explosion. But it took a light to reveal that he was blind. God blinds nobody. He hardens no heart. When the light shines in, it reveals what an individual is, and that is what Isaiah means. That is exactly why the Lord Jesus Christ quoted this passage. Paul wrote, “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?” (2Co_2:14-16). I have often said, as I have given an invitation to receive Christ, “If you have rejected Christif you come into this church as a lost person and are leaving a lost personI am no longer your friend, because you cannot now go into the presence of God and say that you never heard the gospel.” You see, the light of the gospel revealed that they were blind, and they rejected Jesus Christ. He didn’t make them blind, but He only revealed their blindness. “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ"we always triumph. There are those who like to boast of the number who are being saved, but I would much rather boast of the fact that thousands and even several millions of people are hearing the Word of God. My business is sowing the seed, the Word of God. It is the business of the Spirit of God to touch the hearts of those who hear.