Bible Commentaries

Redeeming Vision

Isaiah 6:1

In all life's necessary contact and inevitable contest with reality, nothing is more needed than the uplifted eye with its power of vision, which is the power of purity. To see "also the Lord" is alike the secret of steadfastness and the guarantee of that knowledge in the midst of perplexity, which alone liberates from fretful anxiety and unbelief, and leads to right choice and wise action.

I. In connexion with duty, how indispensable is the sight of the ever-present Lord. The supremacy of duty is one of the insistent facts of life. Its calls are clamant and will not be denied, and its claims are often tyrannous. As the sunlight falling upon common objects gilds them with a beauty not their own, so the knowledge of God's purpose transmutes the base metal of an ordinary life into the gold of His glory and transforms duty into delight. For to see Him thus as the Lord of all duty is to see Him also as the Lord of all power. He has appointed you. He is hence committed to the responsibility of equipping you with strength both to endure and to do.

II. Again, with regard to the discipline by which alone any one can be made holy, we need to see "also the Lord". Otherwise the providences by which Isaiah 6:1

There was a political crisis in Israel at this time—After years of privacy and suffering King Uzziah died of leprosy, and a royal funeral had just taken place. Jotham, his John 12:41).

3. It inspired the angels. As they flew and clustered round the throne, and saw, with the Prophet, the glory of the Lord of the throne, they rendered befitting homage to Him; they covered their faces with their wings in adoring reverence, and seraph responded antiphonally to seraph—"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!" Thus rapturously they sang, until the whole temple was one mighty wave of harmonious praise, and its pillars trembled with the sound of their voices. More "the house was filled with smoke"—the symbol and proof that Jehovah-Jesus was there. Such worship is in the temple above the stars ( 1 Peter 1:3-5; Revelation 7:9-17).

II. Its Effect on the Prophet.—1. He was overwhelmed with fear. No wonder: like as Moses did, he was looking on God. Such fear was natural. It was like that which Moses felt; but we ought never to feel it ( Hebrews 12:18-24).

2. He was conscious of defilement. The splendour and excellency around the Prophet led him to introspect himself, and as he beheld the awful contrast between his inner self and that outer glory he exclaimed, "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 mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts". The lip of the seraphic choristers were clean, because their hearts were clean; and Isaiah felt that he and Israel needed lips and hearts pure as theirs before he and they could praise God as He was then being praised. So he despaired; and yet his very despair, arising from an overwhelming sense of his own and his people's defilement, showed that he had a God-enlightened mind ( 1 Corinthians 2:9-10).

3. He was restored to purity. For a little while he was "in heaviness," until, indeed, one of the seraphim took a live coal with his sacred tongs from off the altar, and laid it on the lips which had confessed their uncleanness, and, as God's representative, said unto him, "Lo! this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged". That moment salvation was his, and heaven too! So now: no sooner is the precious Blood of Jesus brought by the Holy Spirit into touch with the soul of the penitent believer than all its defilement is cleansed, and it becomes whiter than snow.

References.—VI:1.—J. E. Macfadyen, The City with Foundations, p107; J. H. Jowett, Meditations for Quiet Moments, p125; see also Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxvii1890 , p81. J. E. Roberts, Studies in the Lord's Prayer, p47. C. H. Wright, The Unrecognized Christ, p167. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— Isaiah 6:1-8

We cannot contemplate the spectacle which Isaiah describes—if we deal truly with ourselves—without feeling our eyes grow dazzled and our hearts tremble But the description is given to us for this very purpose. We all need the discipline, the inspiration of awe. Wonder—this fear of the Lord—is always the beginning of wisdom. And we specially need the discipline, the inspiration now.

I. There Isaiah 6:3

I. The Vision of God Isaiah 6:5

Isaiah was worshipping in the temple court; and as he knelt he beheld in ecstatic vision the way lying open to the Holy of holies.

The temple on earth became the miniature of the temple in heaven. A wonderful access to God was granted to the Prophet.

Other worshippers saw the outward ritual, the Shekinah, the carved figures of the angels, the vapour of the incense; he saw what their eyes could not see, the King of Glory clothed in His Majesty, the row of adoring seraphim, the future intercession of the Redeemer, and the prayers of the saints in His Name.

I. The effect of the vision on the Prophet. Not what we might have expected—not joy, or satisfaction; but, at first, consternation, a sense of his own sinfulness. (So St. Peter, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful Isaiah 6:8

I. If there be in faith, in work, in character, a living response to God's love and truth, life becomes a lesson of His teaching, an interpretation of His will, a reflection of His love to the age in which we live, to those for whom we are called to work. The call, the appointed work, will not be the same for all. "There are... many kinds of voices in the world," each with its own signification, each with its own power to tell out the praises of God; if one be silent, God's self-revealing is less than perfect.

II. Consider some of those through whom God's purpose of the ages has had its fulfilment. We may learn helpful lessons of life from them.

Abraham, accepting his high vocation with a courageous faith that made him "the friend of God".

Moses at the Bush, conquering his fear and hesitation, and proving worthy to stand alone as the one prophet "whom the Lord knew face to face".

The child Samuel answering the Divine voice, "Speak, for Thy servant heareth," and through his innocent-hearted obedience becoming "established to be a prophet of the Lord".

Isaiah 6:8-11

I. The Wall of Obstruction.—There is the terrible discipline of God's messenger! To be the bearer of a Divine mission is to find yourself, at once, faced by a blind wall of obstruction. It is so fixed and strong that there is nothing you can do against it. What appeal can you make to hearts that are too gross to be stirred, and have no faculties wherewith to understand?

The late Lord Salisbury came back from Constantinople, in the old days of black disaster in the East, to tell us why he had failed to achieve a single reform. "The Turkish officials," he said, "simply have not the capacities to understand what we mean." There is no getting over the preliminary difficulty. If the capacities to understand what we mean are not there, we had better go home at once.

And this was to be the bitter result, to is, of being sent by God. And worse. He was to find that it was his own message which deepened the damage. Man shuts up at the touch of the Divine message just as strange creatures that we find on the seashore withdraw their tentacles and feelers at our touch and disappear into the silence of their shells. Nothing now can get at them, or tempt them forth into the open again. If we had not touched they would be still open and visible. It was the touch that was fatal. So with the prophetic message.

If man is free, then of sheer necessity Divine manifestations cannot be made without giving him, without forcing upon him, a moral judgment. The tenderness of Jesus had to endure the sting of the dread confusion: "For judgment I am come into this world". "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloke for their sin." We shudder at the moral truth.

II. The Light Beyond the Blackness.—I want you to recognize the effect on the Prophet of recognizing that at which we shudder. Just because it is so hard, so terrifying, so black, therefore he knows that it is not all. The misery of such a disaster as that which has been portrayed would of itself prompt God to further action. The Prophet is utterly sure of this; sure of it by premonitory instinct; and, therefore, the dreadful result that is to follow his mission does but draw from him the expression of an unconquerable hope. Lord, how long, how long? Night bears in itself, as it were, the verdict of its vanishing. Through the darkness of the night we know what it is that we miss; and what we miss God will bring us. That is what the Jew in his prophetic optimism never ceased to assert. The fact that we miss it is a proof that it will come. Therefore, we have hope under the night.

III. So he spoke; and he was right. He had read God's mind. There was a secret behind, a secret hope. True, the immediate interval of judgment, he was told, was to be sharp and sweeping. Cities would be wasted, the land utterly desolate. There would be a great forsaking, but underneath all this fierce wrath the good residue would be saved; would be sifted out; would be disciplined; would be perfected. Underneath and behind the terror the Divine compassion would be at work securing the true seed.

"Lord, how long?" We are to utter these words in the face of all disasters, in the teeth of every storm.

—H. Scott Holland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiii1908 , p40.

References.—VI:9-13.—V. S. S. Coles, Advent Meditations on Isaiah I-XII. p52. VI:13.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No121. VII:1-9.—V. S. S. Coles, Advent Meditations on Isaiah I-XII. p57. VII:1-16.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No2305. VII:4.—W. L. Watkinson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi1894 , p218. VII:9.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxix. No2305. J. E. Roberts, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxi1907 , p321. VII:9-14.—V. S. S. Coles, Advent Meditations on Isaiah I-XII. p61.