Isaiah 6:1-8 (The Holy Trinity—Series B)

“God’s Holiness—God’s Glory”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield, CT

May 26, 2024

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text is the Old Testament Reading recorded in Isaiah 6:

¹In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, exalted and lifted up, and His robe’s hems were filling the sanctuary. ²Seraphim were standing above Him—six wings!—each one had six wings. With two each one would cover his face; with two each one would cover his feet; with two each one would fly. ³And one was calling to another, “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts! All the earth is full of His glory!” ⁴The pivots of the doorposts shook because of the sound of the calling one, and the house was filled with smoke. ⁵And I said, “Woe is me! For I am destroyed. For I am a man of unclean lips and in the midst of a people of unclean lips I am dwelling. For the King—Yahweh of hosts—my eyes have seen.” ⁶Then flew to me one of the seraphim. In his hand was a coal. With tongs he had taken it from off the altar. ⁷And he touched it upon my mouth and said, “Behold, this has touched upon your lips. Your guilt is gone; your iniquity is atoned for.” ⁸And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here I am; send me.”

          Oh, how wonderful it must have been to be Isaiah! To see God, the Lord, exalted and lifted up on His throne, dressed in royal robes that are so grand that they could not be contained in the heavenly realm or even in the Holy of Holies! Attending God in His sovereignty, lordship, and reign were the seraphim, a very special order of angels, members of the heavenly host. And this angelic choir literally rocked the house with shouts of praise that echoed back and forth, “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts! All the earth is full of His glory!” Oh, how wonderful it would have been to be Isaiah!

          Isaiah, however, did not share that sentiment. Isaiah did not shout with joy and celebrate being in God’s throne room. Quite the opposite. He said, “Woe is me!” That is a cry of impassioned grief and despair! Far from a shout of joy, Isaiah cries out that he is in big trouble! Why? He tells us, “For I am a man of unclean lips and in the midst of a people of unclean lips I am dwelling. For the King—Yahweh of hosts—my eyes have seen.”

Isaiah completely recognized that he was in the presence of the holy God, and not just the holy God, but the God who is thrice-holy! That’s the Hebrew way of saying that God is the holiest of all! “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts!” Isaiah immediately recognized this as well as his own uncleanness, his complete lack of holiness. Isaiah was as far from God’s holiness as one can be. And that is why Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me! For I am destroyed!” What’s more, not only does Isaiah confess his own uncleanness, but the fact that he lives in the midst of a whole people that are unclean. If Isaiah is unclean, he has no business being in the presence of God, nor do the people of Israel. Nothing unclean is to be tolerated in God’s holy presence. Just read the Book of Leviticus, and quickly this becomes very clear in the Lord’s commands to Israel. In the Biblical world, people became unclean before God in many ways. Certain foods were unclean. Infectious skin diseases, such as leprosy, could cause a person to become unclean. Mildew could render clothes unclean. For all these God prescribed procedures for restoring a person or thing to its clean state. The sinful nature and the sins of the people made them unclean and so God had prescribed the system of animal sacrifices to atone for that sin.

In the presence of God’s holiness, Isaiah, the people of Israel, as well as you and I are unclean, tainted, polluted. We, by nature, are not holy. Isaiah would later preach, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6 ESV). Ever since the fall into sin nothing in creation has been inherently and naturally holy. We are contaminated. We admit this in the general confession of sins each week. We use the very word “unclean” to describe ourselves before the thrice-holy, the most holy God in whose presence we hope to stand. As we enter into the presence of God here in this place, our thoughts would do well to align with Isaiah’s, “Woe is me! For I am unclean, and I live among my brothers and sisters who are also by nature unclean.”

God’s holiness is sometimes described as His “otherness,” the opposite of sinful and unclean. The holy, holy, holy Lord is set apart in a unique way. His holiness is that which makes God unapproachable, untouchable, unknowable, and hidden. God’s holiness would keep God at a distance so that we are not destroyed because of our uncleanness. However, it is the holy God’s desire that He make His people into a holy people by His grace. And He chose not to do this from a distance.

Enter into the picture God’s glory. God’s glory is that almost tangible, touchable, means by which the holy God makes His presence on earth known and real. We read in Exodus 16:10, “And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of Yahweh appeared in the cloud.” The glory of God was present on Mt. Sinai, “Now the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel” (Exodus 24:17 ESV). Later, “The cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys” (Exodus 40:38 ESV). The Lord, Yahweh of hosts, the King of the universe, led His people Israel by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Thanksgiving for Light, Evening Prayer). God’s glory was His presence with His people in a visible, evident way. And so, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, exalted and lifted up, and His robe’s hems were filling the sanctuary. . . . And one was calling to another, “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts! All the earth is full of His glory!” In other words, that which fills all the earth is the glory of Yahweh of hosts.

The holy, holy, holy God is not just a god “up there,” whose claim to honor is simply His holiness and His lordship, though He is King of kings and Lord of lords. The God revealed to Isaiah is also the God who “comes down.” He was present with His people in the tabernacle and in the temple. But this God is not limited to the temple. The holy God comes down in His glory to fulfill His desire to make all people holy by His grace, and through a sacrifice that forgives sins and empowers holy lives. Even more wondrous than Isaiah’s vision of Yahweh of hosts on His throne is the glory of God that comes down to be among the unclean. If the “holiness” of God is what separates Him from sinners, then the “glory” of God is that by which He comes into the world of sinners.

While we are as far from God’s holiness as is possible, God chose to bring His glory among us in order to make us clean. Yahweh would announce through the prophet Isaiah, “Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind” (Isaiah 52:13-14 ESV). Notice that in Isaiah 6, Yahweh is exalted and lifted up. In Isaiah 52, it is the Servant of Yahweh, the Messiah, who is high and lifted up and exalted. The Servant, true God and true Man is lifted up on a cross: “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5 ESV).

God the Son, the Servant of the Lord, became incarnate. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 ESV). This is Jesus, exalted and lifted up on His throne with the Father and the Holy Spirit in Isaiah 6. This is Jesus, high and lifted up and exalted because He gave up His life into death to save all people from their sins. He rose again from the dead to guarantee that our sins are paid for in full and that through the washing with His blood through the water and the Word of Baptism, you and I are now clean! The Apostle John writes for us these words in 1 John 1, “The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7 ESV).

It is through His suffering, death, and resurrection that, Jesus, the Son of God made flesh, is glorified (John 13:31). St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6 ESV). In Christ, by faith, we behold the very glory of God Himself whose One-of-a-Kind Son, Jesus, took to Himself a true human body and soul in His created world for the purpose of establishing His reign and rule, even filling the earth far beyond the bounds and borders of the land to which He first came. And so it is that you and I know the holiness of God and the glory of God that we now possess in the forgiveness of sins as we are filled with the very Spirit of God. By grace through faith, Jesus comes to us in His Word and in His Sacraments so that we might see His glory and know His presence.

Evan as God’s holiness remains as that which shows us our sins and uncleanness, God’s glory in our Savior Jesus dwells among us as that which removes guilt and iniquity through the forgiveness of sins won for us on the cross. As you come into God’s holy presence here in this place, Christ grants you the forgiveness of sins in Holy Absolution so that you may with confidence approach His very throne of grace to hear His good news Word and so receive forgiveness and life. In the confidence of saving faith, you anticipate the presence of the God of glory in the Body and Blood of Christ to enter and fill your space and time, and even to touch your lips and fill your lives that you join with the seraphim, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heavenly hosts in singing this same song, “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts!”

Dear sisters and brothers of our Savior Jesus Christ, “You were washed, you were made holy, you were declared right with God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). The Blood of Christ Jesus has cleansed you from your sins. “Your guilt is gone; your iniquity is atoned for.” You are made right to stand before God in holiness and righteousness with joy forevermore. Amen.

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