1.
Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation
of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord our Rock, and our
Redeemer. Amen. Today we’re looking at Isaiah 6:1-8 and we
will see that like the prophet Isaiah we tremble before God because of our
sins, and yet he takes away our sins, and then He sends us out to share His
forgiveness. The message is entitled, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty,” dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Both fire and
water can be used for good or for bad, to keep alive or to kill. We need fire
to heat our homes, to cook our food, and to run our cars. And yet fire out of
control kills. In the same way, we need water to stay alive; we humans can live
only three or four days without water. But too much water in a flood kills and
drowns. We’ve seen that this past week with the stories of flooding that are
coming out of the state of Texas right now. God uses both fire and water to
kill and to make alive. In Baptism, God drowns the old man, killing our sinful
nature. At the same time, through the same water, he makes alive our new man,
giving us a righteous nature. In calling Isaiah to be his prophet, God uses
fire similarly: with the fire, the burning coal, God killed and destroyed the
uncleanness of sin in Isaiah (Is 6:6–7), at the same time making alive the
redeemed person, making alive the man whose sins were atoned for.
3.
Isaiah
6:1-8 says, “1In 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. 2Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings:
with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he
flew. 3And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full
of his glory!” 4And the foundations of
the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled
with smoke. 5And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for 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!” 6Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in
his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7And he
touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is
taken away, and your sin atoned for.” 8And 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.”
4.
In
the last year of King Uzziah’s life, Isaiah had a vision of God sitting upon
His throne in the heavenly temple. He saw the seraphim, the six-winged angels,
flying above the throne. They shouted out to each other: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
of hosts” (Is 6:3). Isaiah stood in the presence of the three times Holy
God: God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Like Moses and Gideon (Ex 33:20; Jgs 6:20–23), Isaiah was frightened
because he knew that no one could see God and live. In the presence of the Holy
One of Israel, Isaiah was instantly aware of how sinful he was. He was impure
in a place that required perfect purity. Consider, how embarrassing it is to
spill something on your shirt at a formal gathering. How much greater shame
Isaiah must have felt! In His mercy, God sent one of the seraphim to take a
coal from the altar of sacrifice and touch it to Isaiah’s lips. This purged the
prophet of his sins. Isaiah was made fit to bear God’s Word to His people.
5.
As
I said before the song of the angels “Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord Almighty” says something to us on this Trinity
Sunday. The threefold repetition
announces the Trinity, three holy persons in one holy God. Modeled on the Athanasian Creed, we can say, “The Father is holy, the Son holy, and the
Holy Spirit holy; and yet they are not three holies, but one holy.” We actually do sing this song of the
angels in our liturgy, in the service of the Sacrament, where “with angels and archangels and with all the
company of heaven” we sing, “Holy,
holy, holy.” Instead of taking us
into heaven, God brings heaven down to us.
The common saying “Heaven is where
Jesus is” holds true here, since Jesus’ body and blood are on the altar.
6.
And,
all this is just overwhelming for Isaiah! (vv 4–5). When Isaiah sees God and the angels in his
vision, he recognizes that he is not holy, but “a man of unclean lips.” He constantly lives among people in the
same condition. “Unclean” points out that Isaiah cannot fulfill the demands of God’s
Law. A man of unclean lips cannot stand
before God as the holy angels, the seraphim, can. The only appropriate response is “Woe is me! For I am lost.”
7.
Our
modern world still has an idea of the holy.
A pastor was talking to a man from Pittsburgh and asked him where he
went to high school. He told the pastor
what high school he went to, which happened to be the same high school that an
All American football player and NFL superstar played at. It turns out that this man was an All Star in
his conference as a senior in high school.
And, then this other guy comes up as a freshman. He was three years younger than him, but
twice as big as anyone else on the team.
He would embarrass his team mates just running down the field with the
special teams because he’d get to the kicker twice as fast as anybody else.
Everybody was excited to have him on their team, and yet at the same time they
all hated him. They all despised him, because he was so much better at football
than they were. Even at the human level, something greater than ourselves
totally threatens us.
8.
There
was a book written years ago called, “The
Peter Principle,” that said the most super-confident people have to go off
and start their own businesses. They’ll never make it up in the hierarchy of
the big corporation. Why? Because they deeply threaten their superiors. One of the more hilarious examples of the
presence of the holy is in Mark 4 where Jesus is in the boat with his
disciples. There’s a storm that comes up, and they’re all afraid. He calms the
storm, and they’re even more terrified, because the rescue is more terrifying
to them than the danger from which they were rescued. They realize that the one who is in the boat
with them is the very Son of God.
9.
But,
even though Isaiah shows us that God is completely holy and superior to us,
Isaiah shows to us how God cleanses us in order to come into His presence. An angel brings a burning coal from the altar
and places it on Isaiah’s lips (vv 6–7a).
The altar is the place where sacrifices for sin were made. So the angel declares, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your
sin atoned for.” The sacrifices made
for sin on the altar are applied to Isaiah personally.
10.
This
is a model of Confession and Absolution.
In the same way as Isaiah exclaimed “Woe
is me,” we confess our sins at the beginning of the worship service, for we
deserve God’s punishment and not the chance to stand before him. In the same way as the angel applied God’s
forgiveness to Isaiah, the pastor absolves the sinner, delivering to each
sinner God’s forgiveness won by Jesus Christ through his sacrificial suffering
and death on the cross : “I forgive you
all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Because each person bears the righteousness,
the holiness, of Christ, he or she now can stand comfortably before the Holy
Trinity. And that is why we do care about this story. The One
God Is Holy, Holy, Holy . . and He Makes
Us Holy!
11.
So
now, finally, God can ask a question (v 8a).
Hear the Trinity again? “Whom
shall I send, and who will go for us?” God is both one (“I”) and three
(“us”). And the triune God—who in
himself has all power and glory— asks his sinful servant to do an eternally
important task.
12.
Isaiah
can now hear God’s call and receive it. Why?
Because his sins have been atoned for. Now forgiven, Isaiah hears God speaking,
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for
us?” He receives the call and
answers, “Here am I! Send me.” Isaiah
can now represent God to the Israelite people as a prophet. It’s important to note that God took the
initiative in asking Isaiah. Isaiah did
not present himself as ready to work for God. Certainly not before he was forgiven! Rather, God called and Isaiah answered.
13.
But
having God’s call did not make Isaiah’s work easy. In the next two verses following our reading,
the Lord would warn how hard the hearts of his people would be (vv 9–10). That is what happened. Isaiah’s message was
largely ignored. Yet he persevered
almost sixty years, delivering God’s message for him.
14.
God
continues to call people to his work. In
the present day, God continues to call pastors for his work. In fact, God calls every Christian to live a
life dedicated to him, serving God in whatever capacity he has placed you or
me. That, too, is a story we—and the
world—care about deeply. Amen.
