Recently (a couple of weeks ago) my pastor asked me to read this section of Scripture and lead the congregation in prayer as part of our worship service. Reading this passage, and the sermon of that day, both changed the way I have looked at sin since. I wanted to address this passage of Scripture and share a few of the things that really impacted me. A couple of the points come from the Hebrew in this passage, so I beg your leave to discuss those, and I ask that you trust what I'm going to say. Alternatively, I hope that my reading of this passage might encourage you to do some research on the passage yourself, that you may be challenged and transformed by the Word of God.
First, the English of this passage:
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. Above 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. And one called to another and said:
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!"
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And 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!"
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for."
And 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."
The first thing that struck me was the declaration made by the Seraphim: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!" (A better rendition might note that he is called the Lord of armies, but that's a secondary point.) The reason this declaration struck me is because of the triple repeated, "Holy!" In the original Hebrew and Greek there was no punctuation. No exclamation marks, no periods, no commas, no way to separate or accentuate a word other than either its placement in the idea, or a play on its form, or a repetition of the word itself. Thus, when we see a repeated word or term it is there for one specific reason: emphasis.
For the Seraphim to call God "holy" three times indicates a serious emphatic statement. It would be like standing in the midst of a courtroom and suddenly the bailiff picks up a bull horn and screams as loud as he can that the judge is honorable and just. If you miss the implication, it is because you choose to ignore that which has been screamed at you.
God is holy! He is utterly, indescribably holy! His holiness is to be shouted, it is declared by those beings which are in his presence day and night. This is the first and most important descriptor of God. His holiness defines his other attributes, because it puts them in proper perspective.
God's holiness is his transcendence above and beyond this world. He is like nothing in this world, utterly distinct and incomparable. It is for this reason that Scripture says of God, "Who is like the Lord?" (Psalm 40:5; Psalm 89:6; Isaiah 40:18, 25; 46:5) And here, you have heavenly beings, flying above the throne of God, which is itself a high and loft throne, and they are declaring this holiness, over and over again, yelling it loudly to one another. That's how important it is that we get that God is holy, the seraphim yell not to creation, but to one another, even though they dwell in the presence of God.
This point only began to really come home to me when I began to consider the rest of God's attributes in relation to this holiness. Think about it this way: God demonstrates his power so that we can understand that his power is beyond what we can comprehend, it is holy. God works great and wondrous miracles so that we can understand that if God is able to do things which amaze us, how much greater are his works which we can not fathom! His holiness, his indescribable nature, is declared by comparison with that which we can understand. Likewise of any of God's attributes, his anger, his patience, his justice, and particularly his love. We cannot really comprehend any of these attributes of God, because his holiness puts them beyond our grasp. We can witness a declaration of his love or justice, but that only gives us a glimpse into the reality that we cannot fully grasp, because God is beyond us.
But, here's what blows me away more than anything else, what made me really begin to consider the beauty of God's holiness: he does not do his great works for himself! What I mean is that God is holy, by his very nature, and there is nothing that adds to or takes away from this holiness. Thus, when God shows his glory through his great works, he does not add anything to himself, but simply shows us, mere humans, how wonderful he is, out of a great love for us. Remember, God has seraphim declaring his holiness, he already knows his holiness, he does not need us to praise him, but he gives us the opportunity to praise him for our good, because he loves us.
God is the only being who deserves this praise, because his beauty is perfect. So, for us to be able to praise God is a gift to us, because being able to praise God means that we are getting some glimpse of perfection, some participation in the amazing glory of the one who defines everything good and beautiful. It's like getting an invite into the most amazing art gallery ever. God is not changed or made more amazing by our worship, but we who witness his holiness are changed, because we experience that which is truly beautiful. This is the situation Isaiah found himself in: ushered into the presence of glory, confronted with that which left him dumbfounded (literally) because of how wondrous it was.
God is holy, he is awesome, and he shows his holiness to us because of his love for us, but this is only the beginning of this passage. Add to that the very beings who are declaring this: seraphim. (In the Hebrew the "im" ending is simply a plural ending, hence some translations read "seraphs" as a valid plural form of the term, since the Hebrew "seraph" is the singular form.) The word itself means "burning ones". Thus, here are "burning ones," or beings whose own glory makes them appear to be on fire (or who really are made of fire), who are declaring how holy God is. His glory is made manifest through comparison with their glory, because they are declaring his holiness, and not their own.
Then, Isaiah gives utterance to words that simply do not translate into the English with the same nuance which they have in Hebrew. Isaiah looks to the Lord and says, "Woe is me! For I am [compelled to be silent, brought to silence, made silent, or undone, ruined, destroyed]." (Everything within the brackets could be viable interpretations of this passage.) Thus, when we read from Isaiah, "I am undone" what he is saying is, "I am brought to silence." Here the idiom of silence represents the idea of death or total destruction. This ties the statement in with the rest of what Isaiah says, "For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."
The idea of unclean lips goes far and beyond simply the words of the people, it goes to their lives, their very being. Thus, as Christ declared, "For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." (Matthew 12:34) For Isaiah, for his mouth to be silenced was a condemnation of his very life. So, likewise, when Isaiah complains of the uncleanness of the lips of the people, he is condemning the way they live. They are unclean in word and deed. And he is one of those people, he is not innocent, he is not holy, he is not good. I realized as I read those words what a condemnation that should be to me: though I might know how to say the right things, though I might appear to be a "good Christian" to the world, my heart ought to be condemned before God because of my sinfulness. I am in the position of Isaiah, and I need to declare, "Woe is me! I am compelled to be silent, I should be destroyed before my holy God!"
Yet Isaiah was not left there. Here the Hebrew again plays on words and imagery: one of the burning ones takes a "glowing coal" and touches Isaiah's mouth with it. One of those who is on fire takes a coal of fire and touches that which symbolizes Isaiah's wickedness, his lips, and declared Isaiah to be clean. Imagine that scene for a minute, a flying being of fire holding a burning coal in his hand reaches out to you and touches your lips with a searing fire, and declares you to be clean.
Here the full imagery of the situation is brought out: Isaiah is not simply standing in the temple, he is standing in the middle of a sacrifice. Remember, the temple was filled with smoke after God's holiness was declared. Why would the temple be filled with smoke? Because a sacrifice was taking place. We know this because the smoke is not merely from the altar of incense, but there is a burning coal, which came from the altar, which means that a sacrifice was burning on the altar of God.
Here we tie into the imagery of Christ, because he is the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world. (1 Peter 1:19-21) He is the sacrifice that God accepted to quench his anger, which allows a guilty people to approach a holy God. Isaiah was standing in the presence of the God who makes redemption for his saints, offering up a sacrifice to himself which we could not offer up. And Isaiah was made a participant of that sacrifice. A coal from the fire of God's sacrifice was taken and placed upon Isaiah's lips, so that he became a participant in this symbolic sacrifice that would one day be fulfilled in the death and suffering of the Messiah.
And look what happens to Isaiah because of his exposure to the sacrifice of Christ: the man who was brought to silence, who was compelled to recognize the sinfulness of his life before the holy God of the universe, suddenly has the courage to speak up and say to God, "Here I am, send me!" Because Isaiah saw the holiness of God, he was brought low, he considered himself already dead. But, because Christ died on his behalf and he was able to participate in that sacrifice, his words, the actions of his life, were made acceptable before God. Isaiah was given a boldness to go from laying on his face to standing before the awesome God of all creation, all because of the sacrifice that God prepared for himself.
The more I studied this passage, just in preparation to read it at church, the more I was faced with the reality that I had lost sight of the holiness of God. I had forgotten his glory, and I had forgotten that when I sin I am transgressing that holiness, that glory, that awesome and amazing attribute of God that cannot be fully understood here on earth, because it is the reflection of how utterly incomprehensible and beyond us God really is. But, in addition to that, my sins made light of the sacrifice God prepared for himself. Instead of allowing the coal from the altar of God to touch my lips, I would draw near to it, I would feign to touch it, and then I would go back again into the secret realms of my heart, and I would not let myself be singed by the purifying fire of God.
For this reason, for the last two weeks, I have been continually thinking to myself, "Would it glorify God for me to do that? Would it glorify God for me to go there? Would it glorify God for me to watch that, think that, or listen to that?" The seraphim constantly declare God is holy, so how could I, who have enjoyed the benefits of the death of Christ, do anything less in my own life? Do I really think God is that holy? In being confronted with these questions I was forced to reconsider how I was living, so that I could be like Isaiah, transformed by my experience of seeing the holiness of God.
To be honest, for those who have read this far, I can only apologize. There is something about being exposed to an experience that cannot quite be captured by simply writing about it. Particularly when it is the Word of God that we are confronted with, there is an intrinsic and personal challenge that is hard to express to others. I can only hope that you will be challenged by this section of Scripture as I was. I can only hope that as you have read of my experience of going through this passage, you will be able to appreciate the imagery, the nuances, and the power of this passage more. I hope you are challenged to think about the awesome holiness of God a little bit more, so that you can too can live a life changed by meeting the God of Isaiah, the God of the universe.
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