Isaiah 6:1-8 [Trinity Sunday-CWS B]
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace-Benson/Vail, AZ
May 27, 2018
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Today I’d like to talk with you about some things that are awesome. And I don’t mean awesome in the sense of “Dude, that video game is awesome!” or “Have you met Ashley? She is so awesome!” I realize that these days anything can be “awesome.” Even things that are not awesome are awesome. A guy rear-ends your car at a stoplight. Your response? A sarcastic “Oh, that’s just awesome.” Today though, we leave cultural usage and classifications behind and view things spiritual as we read the words of Isaiah the prophet. When I read these words, all I could say was AWESOME. SIMPLY AWESOME. And I mean awesome in the truest sense: inspiring an overwhelming reverence…or even fear. If you can imagine it, if you can put yourself in Isaiah’s place, the vision given to him and shared with us does create an overwhelming reverence and fear of God. It is—in the truest sense of the word—awesome. Here are those words again. Listen for two things that are truly awesome: 1. THAT GOD IS WHO HE IS and 2. THAT HE HAS CALLED US In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
Isaiah was the government official who recorded the events of King Uzziah’s reign as ruler of Judah, the southern kingdom of God’s people. But Isaiah tells us here about the vision the Lord used to call him to another kind of work. He calls him to be a mouthpiece for the Lord, to be his prophet. As Isaiah describes the vision, he reveals the first thing that is truly awesome: THAT GOD IS WHO HE IS. Isaiah was privileged to see the Lord himself. What an awesome and majestic scene as the Lord is on a high, high throne with a flowing robe that filled the temple of heaven. And Isaiah looked and saw angels. To be specific, he saw angels called “seraphs.” We don’t know much about the classification of the uncountable multitude of angels which serve God in heaven, but perhaps these are the same kinds of angels we read about in Revelation chapter 4, which also have six wings. They may be highranking angels. What Isaiah saw though was that these unique creatures serve the Lord and worship him. They understand the glory of God and the praise he is due and they give it to him. They revealed the greatness of God in their actions too, as they would not even look at God but covered their faces, and as they called out “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”