If you would, the 6th chapter of Isaiah. I want to begin reading in verse
1 down through verse 13. Let's read the entire chapter. We'll be looking this morning
really at verses 1 through 8. But let's read the entire chapter
of Isaiah chapter 6. In the year that King Uzziah
died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted
up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims,
each one had six wings. With two he covered his face,
with two he covered his feet, and with two He did fly. And one cried unto another and
said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth
is full of His glory. And the post of the doors was
moved at the voice of Him that cried, and the house was filled
with vapor, with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me, for I
am undone. because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips,
for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew
one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand,
which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar. And he laid
it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and
thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged. Also I
heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will
go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send
me." I want maybe to entitle this message
this morning, When I Saw His Glory. And I want to entitle
it that because John in his Gospel in chapter 12 quotes from this
chapter, from this vision. And he said that Isaiah spake
of Him when he saw His glory. So Isaiah saw the Lord's glory
when I saw His glory. I have four headings to this
message this morning. I'll give these to you. Maybe
it will help you to stay up with me. I want, first of all, to
look at the time of this vision. It was in the year that King
Uzziah died, and I think there's some significance to that. Then
secondly, I want to look at the vision itself, when he saw the
Lord high and lifted up. Then I want to look at the effects
that it had upon this prophet. When he saw the Lord, it had
a profound effect upon his soul, his spirit. And then fourthly,
I want to look at His commission that came out of this vision. Who will go for us? Here am I. Send me. Let's begin by looking
at the time of this vision. In the year that King Uzziah
died, I saw the Lord. And mainly I want to consider
two things this morning concerning the timing of this vision. Isaiah,
no doubt, was very, very tenderly attached to this king. He was a very popular king. Isaiah was a very popular prophet.
He had access to these kings. He could speak with them, probably
prayed with them, instructed them. This king was probably
one of the more brilliant kings that Israel had. He reigned 52
years. in Judah. He was a very decent
man, a very wholesome man, a very godly man. Uzziah's dad, King
Amaziah, was also a good king at first. I don't know if Isaiah knew him,
but he reigned through these four kings, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz,
and Hezekiah. But Amaziah, Uzziah's dad, was
a good king also at first, but he grossly erred. He turned to
awful idolatry and left the Lord. He went down to make war against
the Edomites. The Lord delivered the Edomites
into his hands, and he brought back the idols of the Edomites
and set them up in Jerusalem and worshipped them and burned
incense to them. And it angered the Lord, and
the Lord sent Jerusalem against Him, or Israel against Him, the
King of Israel came down against Him, and took so many of them
captive, killed some of them, took away the precious metals
and vessels out of the house of the Lord, and it just devastated
Judah. Jerusalem was so cast down, they
didn't know what was going to happen. A few years after that,
Amaziah was killed and the kingdom of Judah was shattered. They
were shattered. They didn't know what was going
to happen and what they were going to do. But Amaziah had
a 16-year-old son and his name was Uzziah. King Uzziah, 16 years
old. They took this young kid and
made him king over Judah. And he was a very brilliant young
man. The first thing he did is got
him a standing army. He recruited a standing army
of well over 300,000 men. Now that's a big army for a little
place like Judah. And he set 2,600 generals over them. He had officers. They were called the mighty men
over these. And he got himself a great name.
He began to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. He built towers
on the wall that they could defend themselves. Invented, the Bible
says, engines. that shot out arrows. I don't
know if it shot several arrows at one time. He invented engines
that would throw great rocks. And he became a mighty warrior. And the word got out down in
Egypt in foreign countries. Listen, don't mess with Judah.
Don't mess with Judah right now. They've got a mighty king. Just
don't mess with them. He took back the land that his
dad lost. He restored the worship in the
house of the Lord. and things were looking so good.
But I think what encouraged Isaiah more than anything about this
man, what made him so tenderly attached to this man more than
anything else is what the Bible says about this man. King Uzziah
did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord. And he sought
the Lord in the day of Zechariah the prophet and the Lord greatly
prospered him. And Isaiah remembered when the
kingdom was in shatters, tatters, and so discouraged. And now here's
this mighty king. And did he have some infirmities?
Yes, he had his infirmities. But God blessed this man. And
Isaiah was so thankful that God was prospering him and the kingdom
and the protection they had. And then Uzziah dies. Can you imagine the loss this
prophet must have felt? Can you imagine the gap, the
emptiness, the concern, the anxiety of his heart that he felt that
King Uzziah was dead? What's going to happen now? And
you never knew. You never knew from one king
to the next what was going to happen. They had so much authority.
They were despots in those days. They ruled with absolute authority. What would happen now? And this
brings me to my first point about this. This is when Isaiah saw
this vision. So isn't it very telling that
he saw this vision of the Lord just at the time when he needed
to see it? When he had this gap in his heart,
this emptiness in his heart, this concern in his heart, I
saw the Lord high and lifted up. And I'm just saying the first
thing I wanted to emphasize this morning is that can't the Lord
fill up gaps in a person's life? He can fill those empty places
and He can do it so immediately and He can do it with Himself. How did he fill this awful void
that this prophet no doubt felt in his heart? He filled it with
himself. In the year that King Uzziah
died, and I was feeling this awful loss, I saw the Lord. Don't you imagine that would
fill up just about any gamp person had in his heart. I saw the Lord. Oh my goodness, I saw the Lord. If every comfort that you and
I could imagine could be taken away from us, we would feel no
loss if Jesus replaced it with Himself. I know two dear ladies,
I've known them for several decades now, and both of them lost their
husbands. Such wonderful, kind, and tender
husbands. in the Kingdom of God. And both
of them to this very day are still devastated by that loss. But you know Jesus Christ the
Lord can fill up even a loss like that with Himself? Is there a loss, is there a gap
too big that He can't fill it with Himself? Is there a sin
that He can't forgive? Is there an evil He can't deliver
us from? Is there a pleasure that He can't
give us? Is there anything that He's unwilling
to do to fill up the loss that we sometimes feel? Have you ever
had a loss in your life? I was thinking, and I don't want
to embarrass Brad this morning, but I was thinking while Sarah
and Lily was up here singing, I remembered the loss. I remember
the loss in Jack's life. I remember the loss in Brad's
life. And I thought how wonderful,
how wonderfully the Lord has filled up that with these two
dear people. And so many times He does that,
doesn't He? He fills that gap with others.
I've had that happen in my life. And that's a wonderful thing.
But how much more wonderful when He fills these gaps with Himself. In the year that King Uzziah
died, I saw the Lord. I felt such a loss. I felt so
empty. I felt so lonely until I saw
the Lord. And this gap was filled. Is there any gap that He can't
fill in our lives? You and I haven't lost near as
much as some dear saints have. But you know loss is a relative
term, isn't it? We haven't lost what Isaiah lost,
but Isaiah hasn't lost what other people lost. But if it's a loss
to us, it's a loss. And if you haven't felt lost,
then know this, the Lord Jesus Christ is able and willing to
fill it up. with Himself. We sang that old
song, Hover Over Me, Holy Spirit. Bathe my trembling heart and
brow. Fill me with Thy hallowed presence. Come, O come and fill me now. Fill me now, O blessed Jesus. Come and fill me now. Fill me
with Thy hallowed presence. Come, O come and fill me now.
And the Bible says here that He filled the temple with His
train, filled the temple. Another place says that He fills
heaven and earth. Can He not fill our hearts? I sometimes wonder, brothers
and sisters, what heaven will be like. And I think it has something
to do with this. He will fill us with Himself. And that's Paul's prayer to the
Ephesian church. That you may know the love of
Christ which passeth knowledge. That you may be filled with all
the fullness of God. That's the first thing about
in the year that King Uzziah died. The second thing is this. Mine eyes, he said in verse 5,
have seen the King. What's significant about that?
He saw the Lord, and lifted up, and that filled the void that
he found in Him. But now, he says, my eyes have
seen the King. Isaiah preached to many kings,
and his prophecy went through these four kings, and maybe he
saw them all die. I know he saw three of them die. But can't you imagine, every
time one died, he began to think, what next? Well, here goes another
one. What next? What's the next one
going to be like? All of his infirmities. And he
watched all of these kings come and go with all their infirmities,
all that they could do. Some did great good and some
did great evil. Man, read about Ahaz, Uzziah's
grandson. You talk about a wretched king. He was a wretched king. 2 Chronicles
28 tells us that. Everything Uzziah had done and
Jotham his son reigned for a while. Everything they did good, he
undid it. And the Holy Spirit had a way
of identifying Ahaz. This is that Ahaz. Burned his
children in the fire. Went in and robbed the temple
of the Lord. Cut in pieces all the vessels
and sold them for his own sinful gains. Set up idols all through
Judah. Forbid anybody to go into the
temple. It fell into dilapidation. And God sent an army against
him. Now, you talk about devastation. You talk about upsetting you.
God sent an army against Judah, against Ahaz. In one day, they
killed 120,000 citizens of Judah. If that happened to this nation
as large as we are, what would we think? For 120,000 men to
be killed in one day in Judah? And they took 200,000 women and
children hostage in Cairo, Illinois. Devastated the temple. That was
this Ahab. Here he was watching all of this
take place, but don't you imagine it was a great comfort to him
as he kept wondering, what's this king going to be like? How's
he going to rule? What's going to happen? How many
people have to suffer under him? Will this be a good king? Don't
you imagine it took the edge off when he remembered It really
in the long run doesn't matter in the whole scheme of things
because my eyes have seen the King, the King upon His throne. Wouldn't that settle our hearts
just a little bit? I think you and I know we've
heard people say, well, one president can't change things very much.
We found out something different about that. You take a president
that don't love his country, he can wreak some havoc on this
country. And who's going to be president
next? And what's this president going to do? What about our economy?
What about our social status? What about our morals? What about
all of this? You know, in the whole scheme
of things, it really don't matter, does it, if our eyes have seen
the king, the king, by whom all other kings reign and rule. There is not a judge that sits
on his bench, but this king sits on it. There is not a governor
or a president or a despot anywhere that rules over any man or lifts
his finger to do anything except he does it at the order of him
who sits upon this throne. In the year King Uzziah died,
he saw this wonderful vision and how it must have comforted
him, how it must have filled the gap, and how it must have
encouraged him. You know really, I shouldn't
be so concerned about the rule of these kings. That's the timing. Let's look at the vision itself.
I want you to notice in this vision Isaiah doesn't an even
attempt to describe the Lord's presence. Sometimes in the Bible,
the Lord's presence is revealed in what we call His Shekinah
glory. In the desert, remember the cloud
of the daytime that went over the tabernacle and they followed
the cloud? That was what we call the Lord's
Shekinah glory. Sometimes it was a vapor that
fill the entire tabernacle. Then of a night there was a fire.
That was the Lord's presence. His presence was like a fire.
That's what we call the Shekinah Glory. Sometimes it was an angel
that they saw in flames of fire doing wonderful things. Different
ways the Lord has manifested Himself. But here, here, It seems that
Isaiah is saying, what I'm seeing is indescribable. I'm not going
to take time to attempt to describe it because it's indescribable. I don't see a cloud. I don't
see a fire. I see the Lord Himself. Isaiah saw Him sitting on His
throne, and all He says about Him that He was higher than everything
else. And He was lifted up above everybody
else, and He says His train, His majesty, His beauty, His
glory filled the temple. And you have these creatures
that we know so little or nothing about. These heavenly creatures. and they're majestic creatures,
and they have these six wings, and they're around the Lord of
glory, and they cover their faces with these wings, and they cover
their feet with these wings, and they fly around His throne,
and they just sing and pronounce, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord
of hosts. And Isaiah said, as this was
taking place, I can't describe His appearance. I just noticed
the doors of the post were shaking as they were crying aloud one
to another. And I think it's very telling
that these holy creatures don't even attempt to describe the
holiness of the Lord. I think it's very telling that
neither Isaiah, this great prophet, are these angels, these seraphims,
could describe the holiness. All they could do was just announce
it. When I was reading this last week and studying on it, I thought,
how in the world am I going to describe this vision? How can
I describe the Lord upon His throne high and lifted up? And
I thought to myself, I can't. I can't. But neither could they. Neither could these seraphitims.
They just denounced it. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. When Paul was called up into
the third heaven, he said he heard words that was not possible
for a man to utter. Could it be that he saw the glory
of the Lord? Could it be that he saw the same
wonder that Isaiah saw, and he came back to earth and he said,
I am no more able to describe him than Isaiah was? Are these seraphims? All I can
say about him is what they said. Holy, holy, holy. But Paul wrote
this about this king upon his throne. This is what he said
about him. He said, listen, he is the only
potentate. He is the only King of kings
and Lord of lords, who only hath immortality dwelling in the light
which no man can approach into, whom no man hath seen nor can
see, to whom be honor and power for everlasting." How do you
describe the holiness of God? It is indescribable, isn't it?
You have to see it. This was something like John
saw in his vision in the book of Revelation just before he
closed the book. Remember what he said in the
20th chapter? I saw a great white throne, and
him that sat on it from whose face the heavens and the earth
fled away. What does he mean a great white
throne? He's not talking about God sitting
on a throne that was painted or He sat on a throne that was
marble. He's condescending to describe
to us God Himself in language that we can understand. When
He said that I saw a great white throne, He's speaking of God
Himself. God is the throne. And you see
sometimes this word light in the Scriptures. And it's used
to identify. When God wants to communicate
His holiness to us, He sometimes does it under the symbol of light. God is light and in Him is no
darkness at all. And they tell us that light in
its purest form, in its virgin form, is white. Pure light is
white. And you know the Bible probably
confirms that. Remember when the Lord Jesus was on the Mount
of Transfiguration? And the Bible says His face shined
as the sun and His raiment, His clothes, was white as the light. That's the way He describes Himself.
How can He communicate His holiness to us? He says He's like light. And in His light, in His holiness,
is no darkness at all. So here He sits upon this throne,
this white throne, this holy throne. And the earth and the
heavens have nothing to cover themselves with. Though Seraphim
had their wings, They could cover their faces and their feet. The
earth had nothing. So what does it do? It flees
away from the presence and the face of Him, the holiness of
God. And how can someone like me describe
such a vision of seeing the Lord in His holiness? All we can do
is bow and worship Him, isn't it? When we have a sense of Him
and His majesty and His wonder and His beauty, we can't describe
Him. We just fall before Him in utter
helplessness and we worship Him as the God that He is. And we
sing with these seraphims, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. The earth is filled with His
That's the vision as best as I can describe it. And it must have been very more
profound than I can explain it because of the effects that it
had upon this great prophet. And that's our third point in
verse 5. Look in verse 5, the effects
that it had upon him. Then said I, woe is me, for I
am undone. I am destroyed, I have come apart, because 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." It is obvious
why he suddenly saw himself in this manner, because he saw the
Lord high and lifted up in His holiness. Isaiah is not the only
man that experienced such a vision. Job had something like this appear
to him, didn't he? When the Lord began to speak
with Job and ask him those tough questions, where were you when
I created the foundations of the earth and so forth? And when
the Lord finished speaking, what did Job say? I've heard of you. I've heard of you. My ears have
heard you, but now my eyes see you. And what effect did that
have upon that holy man? I abhor myself, and I repent
in dust and ashes. I am undone, Isaiah said. I abhor myself, Job said. And all of this because of the
vision that they got of God who is holy. Holy, holy. If you read the first few chapters
of the book of Isaiah, one of the favorite words that Isaiah
uses is woe. He was pronouncing woe on everybody. Eight times in the first five
chapters, he pronounced this woe. Woe be unto the wicked,
it shall be ill with him. Woe to them that draw iniquity
with cords of vanity. and saying as it were with a
cart rope. Boy, he got sort of poetic there,
didn't he? Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil.
Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes. And on and on
he goes. Woe is everybody else. But when
he got a vision of the Lord's holiness, his eyes turned within
him and he says, Woe is me. I'm undone. I'm unclean. I am sinful. Woe is me. I'm 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. One man said, This easygoing
Christianity of our day has no deep sense of sin because it
has no clear vision of the holiness of God. We have reason to fear
much in this day that professing Christianity, for the most part,
is nothing better than Phariseeism. God, I thank you that I'm not
like other men are. And the only way that will sweep
this self-delusion away is a deep sense of God's holiness. It's then and only then that
men will not be concerned of how they compare to other men,
but how they compare to God on His throne. And when we stand
before Him, we all will say with this prophet, Woe is me. For I am undone. I am undone. When we see the Lord truly as
the Scripture and the Spirit reveals Him, we're apt to see
ourselves. And it's never pretty when we
see ourselves in the eyes and the presence of God. And here's
another fact that this had upon Him. We're told here in verses
6 and verse 7. Then flew one of the seraphims
unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken
with the tongs from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth,
and said, Lo, this has touched thy lips, and thine iniquity
is taken away, and thy sin is purged." As I was studying this,
that old song kept coming to my mind. What can wash away my
sin? You mean there's something that
can wash away my sins? Even as I stand before the holiness
of God? What can make me whole again?
Shannon, I'm undone. I've come apart. What can make
me whole again? The blood of Jesus. The blood
of Jesus. These glowing This glowing coal
speaks to us of the sacrifice of our Savior. As the sacrifice
was laid upon the altar and consumed by the flames, so Jesus assumed
our humanity and was made a curse for us and exposed Himself to
the fire of God's judgment to satisfy for our sins. And these
purging coals are still glowing today. They are still glowing
today to purge away the sinful conscience of everybody that
is willing before God to confess their sinfulness. This coal is
still glowing, is it not? Is there not still power in the
blood of Jesus to cleanse us from our sins? It's here that
Isaiah's vision takes a turn that's most appealing to our
conscience, appealing for those who have a sense of their sin
and God's holiness. Look at this condescending love. Feel what a deep sense of mercy
is being extended. Here's the Lord upon His throne. Here's these heavenly, holy creatures. crying, Holy, Holy, Holy. And
here is this self-condemned sinner who can do nothing but pronounce
his own woe. And yet, without any delay, heaven
bends down and communicates this precious cleansing that only
heaven can communicate. This Lord who is high and lifted
up It condescends to speak now to this cleansed sinner and says,
Who will go for me? And the sinner speaks and says,
You are my, send me. What effect this had upon this
man. I hope that the Lord is pleased
to bring every one of us to the place where He brought this prophet. have the same sense of God's
holiness, the same sense of this wonderful condescending Savior,
stooping, bending to purge our sins with His blood. What condescending
love! Don't you see it in your... The
Lord upon His high throne, and yet He bends, He stoops down
to wash this unclean sinner from his sin. What condescending love! What tender mercies! is in our
great Savior. Then lastly, His commission in
verse 8, Also I heard the voice of the Lord say, In whom shall
I send, and whom will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send
me. Doesn't this tell us something
about the motive of preaching and teaching and witnessing?
Can we possibly go to preach or teach or really do anything
until we've felt the burning cold from off the altar upon
our lips? If we take away the knowledge
of our personal redemption, what motive do we have to do anything,
especially preach and teach to others? If we don't go with this
motive in mind, then our service must be forced. I can tell you
about the holiness of God because I've felt the sense of it revealed
to my own soul. I can talk to you about redeeming
love for I've experienced the sense of it in my own soul. I
can tell you these things can be experienced in your soul because
I've experienced them in my own soul. I don't have the knowledge or
vocabulary to communicate some things unto you, but I can tell
you there's a reality in the redeeming love and power of God
in Jesus Christ. I've experienced it myself. The
highest heaven has bent down It has condescended in the most
tender love and mercies to meet the deep, deep need of my perishing
soul and has washed away my sins and has reconciled me to God.
And I can tell you that because I have experienced it. I have
experienced it. Who will go for me? Who will go speak for us? It
has to be somebody that has stood where this prophet stood and
experienced what this prophet experienced. Men cannot tell,
neither should they tell, what they do not know and what they
have not experienced for themselves. You know this same Lord, this
very same King that Isaiah saw lifted up, high upon His throne. This same glorious person crossed
the Sea of Galilee with His Apostle and came unto the country of
the Gadarenes and found a man possessed with a legion of demons. And that man lived in the tombs
naked and nobody could tame him. This Lord that Isaiah saw upon
His throne, He tamed that man. He cast the demons out of that
man and gave him rest in his soul and clothed him with clothes. And the man said, Let me go be
with you. And the Lord said, No, you are
going to have to go for me. And in the statement the Lord
Jesus made to that Gadarene, we have the message and the motive. The message is this. Go tell
them what great things the Lord hath done. Is that not the message? It's not about what we've done. It's about what He's done. It's
about who He is, what He's accomplished. Go tell them what I've done.
That's the message, isn't it? God help us not to get wrapped
up in our sins. And it's so easy to do. It's
so easy for me to come here Sunday after Sunday and preach to you
all of these things that we're suffering. All of these things
that we're concerned about and going through. And after a while,
we've left Him. whom this book is about. Go tell
them what the Lord has done, and here's the motive for you. For you. You know, that's a lot of what
preaching is about. It's about Christ and Him crucified.
And He was crucified for me. Brothers and sisters, if you've
been neglectful in your witnessing, if you have difficulty doing
it, may the Lord communicate to you this morning a fresh sense
of what this prophet experienced. The holiness of God, that redeeming
love and tender mercies, that forgiveness that's in Jesus Christ
the Lord. May God revive your heart in
the knowledge of that this morning. I want us to sing one song, if
we can, before we go.