4.1

Woe is me (Isaiah 6:5)

In Isaiah’s book of the Bible, he described his vision of God in His majesty and holiness. In that vision, Isaiah saw God sitting on a throne. His appearance was so great that the train of His robe alone filled the Temple in Jerusalem. Angelic beings called seraphim were flying everywhere above God, proclaiming their own vision of Him: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts” (6:3). They were seeing God’s holiness even as they covered their eyes with one pair of their wings. Without eyes they witnessed the beauty of their unknown God who is pleased to be known by them. Beholding God in His holiness is to see Him altogether distinct from the work of His hands, the awesome Other upon whom all depends. How impossible it is for any in creation to know Him. Who can behold God, unless He does it?

“The whole earth is full of His glory” (6:3) the seraphim’s explosive praise continued. All the earth manifests the glory of His good that freely forms and holds the galaxies altogether as one. To behold God’s glory is to see all things in relation to His good, far exceeding anything conceived in creation. All things receive from God who is Source and substance of all. God’s revealed glory proclaims His sovereign and faithful will for His works, the ineffable wonder of His mysterious and gracious ways. Existence shouts aloud His good. All things do not see the good of God’s will, but the seraphim saw and were in awe of His overwhelming power that is so careful to attend to the smallest and least. What they see inspires praise in them that sings for eternity. What we can see as bystanders of Isaiah’s revelation is that God is both distinct from and fully engaged with His earth. His glory permeates creation’s every detail, even the small and fleeting detail of Isaiah’s life. Whether or not we receive a revelation of God, we all express His glory that is immeasurably substantial and eternally enduring

Unlike the seraphim who were exuberantly rejoicing in God, Isaiah unraveled before Him. Isaiah, of the race God made in His image, not only saw God but also saw his own image in the light of God. He saw himself in relation to God and what he saw undid his trembling heart, crushed him as dust about to expire its last breath. Isaiah’s eyes were stripped naked to behold the blinding glory of his awesome King. In God’s light, he saw himself compared to God. Who is he? This man chosen by God saw he is “a man of unclean lips” who belongs to a people just like him. How can Isaiah survive so pure and transcendent a Majesty? “Woe is me, for I am ruined!” (6:5) he wailed

At that moment, Isaiah was shown something of what God always sees: his unclean lips that can never speak the language of a holy God. He saw the vast chasm between them, their insuperable divide. But in the next moment, though that time may have felt interminable to Isaiah, God sent a seraphim to meet him in his despair. This seraphim, whose title in Hebrew means to burn, burnt away the uncleanness from his lips with a burning coal from the sacrificial altar. God traversed their great separation and saved Isaiah from his uncleanness and despair by covering his iniquity (vs. 7) so that he could engage his holy God. The Hebrew word for covering is kaphar, the root word of kippur as in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. God did not despise Isaiah in his sin and helplessness. He answered his need and delivered him. God atoned for his sin

Then God brought Isaiah near to hear a divine discussion He was having with Himself. “Who will go for Us,” God wondered, to speak for Us to Israel? The one who moments ago was writhing in anguish over his sin, cried out, “Here am I. Send me!” (vs. 8). Isaiah immediately seized his new life as God’s own and he wanted to proclaim that life to others, just as God is ever proclaiming His life. I imagine Isaiah answering God like an excited child wildly waving his hands to be picked, frantically jumping up and down to get God’s attention to choose him to go speak for Him, to live out this holy call of his God. Isaiah was all eager to hear God’s words for His people, wanting to speak even the hard and difficult words God had for Israel

The strange and paradoxical words God spoke may not have sounded so strange to Isaiah, because they seem to say the very experience he just had. God told His prophet to tell Israel to keep listening but not perceive and keep looking but not understand. Israel will continue knowing and seeing nothing until she turns to her God who will heal her by revealing Himself to her, just as He did to Isaiah (vs. 9-10). Isaiah did not see his despair and uncleanness until he saw God, and he was not delivered from his despair and uncleanness until he saw God. Before the face of God, he both saw and was freed of his blindness. Before the truth of God, he saw and was freed of his self deceptions. This revelation of God’s salvation was what He wanted Isaiah to tell His people. Isaiah was to speak for God with his lips that God made holy, so that Israel could hear and be made holy by God in the same way

Isaiah’s change did not happen within the structures of his known life. God did not conform Himself to Isaiah’s understandings, but He broke into his humanly conceived world and transformed it into His own. All Isaiah knew himself to be — his identity, his accomplishments and failures, each and every day he lived and measured and managed — vanished as vapor before God. All that Isaiah knew and trusted was swallowed up by God who revealed Himself as Source and Judge of all, the I AM who creates Isaiah to be. God’s revealed holiness rests all created things in their true relation to Him and becomes their way of life

Isaiah was nearly crushed by God’s holy majesty until God reached out and cleansed him, giving him eyes to see not only the fear of His holiness but the grace of His holiness that performed the impossible good for Isaiah. From that time, the passion of his life was God who cleansed and enlarged his heart to receive Him. Nothing else could remotely satisfy his heart again. Anything else would sound as hollow as a pebble falling down a bottomless pit, bouncing off walls on its way until it disappears