SERMON TITLE: The Greater Glory
SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 6:1-8
SPEAKER: Dr. Bryan Chapell
DATE: 2-23-25
Sermon Discussion Guide
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Isaiah 6:1-8 (ESV)
“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. 2 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. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 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!” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” 8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”
You have only to read the newspaper to know the importance of a dateline. A critical date and place pull to mind significant events and all the concerns that surround them. The datelines most important to us are those that occur when our world is coming unglued. While we use the convention, it is not new. Here in Isaiah, the ancient prophet uses the same convention. He gives a dateline: the place is the temple of Israel; the date is the year that King Uzziah died. For the people in Israel this dateline is front page news of great distress that provides the context for Isaiah’s vision.
I remember another front-page newspaper story that may help us understand Isaiah’s task. Our nation’s president was meeting with dignitaries from other nations for some major summit. All the accompanying pomp and circumstance was captured in a photo showing the government officials in the glory of a receiving line with limousines, state aircraft, and the rainbow colors of national flags providing the background. That picture of great glory I remember, but it is not why I remember that particular front page. After all there have been so many summits — too many parades of important people for anyone really to lock itself in my memory. So, it was not the display of power and prestige that etched this image in my mind. No, the reason I remember that particular front page was because of the contrast of that picture of glory with another photo that was tucked down at the bottom of the same newspaper front page. Not many words accompanied the lower picture, just a caption saying that this was a family adopting a child with a dangerous disease. Yet, in the picture this wonderful mother was kissing her new child on the lips.
The juxtaposition of this simple picture of personal compassion with the grandiose display above it raised a question in my mind that I now ask of you: "Which of these two pictures — that of parading presidents or that of selfless intimacy — depicted the greater glory?" I know your head will say there can be no definite answer to such a question, but what does your heart say? The answer you find there will largely determine what you see in this passage.
What you can't help but see is
God pulls back the veil of his own splendor to reveal matters his people must know.
Verse one tells us Isaiah sees a throne in a temple. There is no earthly parallel in Israel's experience: thrones don't go in temples. The prophet is in the temple but his vision extends into heaven and there God is seated. This is the glory the people seem to need. Their world is coming apart because King Uzziah has just died. He is the king who kept the walls of defense secure and the wheels of commerce turning. His death sends panic throughout the nation, yet Isaiah sees that God is still on his throne. All is not lost, hope need not be abandoned. God reigns in heaven above. He is still sovereign.
Yet we are soon to understand this is not all the great glory we are to perceive. As God remains undiminished, even untouched by the deterioration of human affairs we begin to sense how separate he is from his creation. This is the glimmering truth of the holiness of God that will unfold as the passage unfolds. The essence of our God's holiness is that he is wholly other. He is separate from anything that would sully his glory or diminish his perfection. He is majestic, elevated and lifted up. He is not entangled by his creature's failures nor is his radiance dimmed by their imperfections. The holiness of God is his purity from earth's stain.
Verse two clarifies any question we may have about what we are seeing by confirming that the heavenly hosts, the seraphim, are about him. He exists in his rightful place. He is high and exalted. But the heavenly hosts that serve him, cover their eyes and feet before his radiant holiness. Even the angels want neither to gaze upon nor be exposed by the blinding and burning radiance of God’s holy glory. Nothing created, either in heaven or on earth, can endure in the brilliance and burning of his glorious holiness.
So that we will recognize how magnificent God’s glorious holiness is, we not only have its marks revealed to us, but also the prophet begins to reveal its measure.
In verse three, the seraphs of heaven sing of God, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts" — the Hebrew linguistic device of doubling a term for emphasis taken up another notch to indicate the infinite degree of God's perfection: he is more entirely and perfectly holy than the words of heaven's hosts can capture.
But the thrice-holy message is not merely indicating the degree of God's holiness but its duration. The Apostle John in his New Testament vision of heaven says the hosts were still singing this tri-fold praise -- and moreover, they do not stop as long as the Lord sits and the throne. And, then John adds that our Lord sits on the throne forever and ever. He is the God who was holy in the Old Testament, is holy in the New Testament, and will be holy in the New Creation. He is not merely infinitely holy, he is the forever holy God.
Not only do we see the degree and duration of the holiness of our God. Isaiah allows us to glimpse a drama to understand the greatness of the glory of God’s holiness. You have heard of a “tempest in a teapot” that is much ado about nothing, but here is a tempest in a temple that reveals the great glory of God's holiness. You have no awareness of the tempest until you fix in your mind's eye the scene before the prophet. Like a dark, billowing cloud smoke fills the temple (end of vs. 4). We presume this vast cloud of smoke arises from the altar of atonement mentioned in vs. 6 — which is to say that no wisp of sacrificial smoke can satisfy the holy requirements of a truly holy God. The holiness of God requires sacrifices so extensive that their burning overwhelms the temple and enters the sanctuary of God in heaven. The great billows of smoke tell us that our God's holiness is beyond our measure and beyond our ability to satisfy.
In the midst of this dense cloud fly the seraphs (their name means, “burning ones”). They always serve the Lord, which means they are never done. Like the flashes of an unrelenting lightning in the midst of a storm the seraphs flit through the smoke cloud, and like lightning they have an audible effect. They sing antiphonally to one another, "Holy, Holy, Holy" but they do not sing with the gentle strains of an angelic melody such as we might imagine. Vs. 4 says that at the sound of their voices the threshold (literally the foundation in which the door posts are buried deep in the ground) shake. The seraphs in the temple cloud thunder, "Holy, Holy, Holy," and the very foundations of heaven shake. The effulgence of glory cannot be confined to the temple — it flows to the foundations of earth — as vs. 3 concludes, "the whole earth is full of his glory."
This picture of divine holiness borrowed from one earth's most awesome forces is intended to overwhelm — and it does. To descriptions of the mark and measure of God's holiness the prophet now adds his own reactions. In describing these effects of holiness upon his own heart the prophet underscores the great glory of God.
The prophet in facing this holy God recognizes there is no comparable goodness in himself. He cries out, “I am ruined.” Though the word is difficult to translate in its full intent the idea of total devastation and humility is not hard to discern. From the seraphs’ lips the cries of "Holy, Holy, Holy," still ring but Isaiah realizes he has no worthiness to join their praise. He cannot sing the heavenly song and instead cries out, "I am ruined. I am a man of unclean lips"; i.e., I cannot participate in this praise. The great glory of God’s holiness makes him also realize that no human can rightly honor God. So, he not only says, "I am a man of unclean lips,” but adds, “and I live among a people of unclean lips." He echoes the conclusion of the Apostle Paul, “There is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:10).
This picture of the prophet of God — a man holy by the world's standards — humbled, prostrated, and ruined is the final display of the great glory of God's holiness. God’s holiness is the force that when properly, fully perceived knocks the legs out from under any claim of human goodness, dignity or pride. The prophet’s words remind us that if we do not see our sin for the great horror that it is, this is only because we do not see God’s holiness for the great glory that it is.
Yet, as great as is the incomparable holiness of our God, there is a greater glory in this passage. The greater glory is not a picture of our God’s holiness in transcendence but rather the picture of his holiness transferred.
The mark of this greater glory is not in the fireworks display of the divine revelation but in the warm glow of a divine kiss. One of the seraph servants of the great God goes to touch Isaiah's lips with a purifying coal from the altar of atonement (vs. 6). The infinite becomes intimate, dealing personally with one who by his own confession deserves no honor from heaven.
How do I know this is the greater glory? I know from the testimony of my heart. The proof I heard on the lips of a seminary student this summer when he described sitting in a theology class and hearing about the omnipresence of God. The student said that, as he sat in the library thinking about the glory of the omnipresence of God, he was filled with wonder to think that God would be in all places. Then, he said he was more sobered to reflect that this actually meant that God was in the room with him. But, then, the student said the thought that made the chills run down his spine was that the reality of God’s omnipresence ultimately meant that the hand of God was on his shoulder in that moment. In the same way, God’s hand is on your shoulder at this moment, and that is a greater glory.
Whenever the infinite becomes intimate we discover the greater glory of our God. Not merely that he possesses an attribute as profound as infinite holiness, but that such a holy God would care so intimately for each of his children is a greater glory.
To evaluate the glory of this wonder I do not merely have the testimony of my heart, I have the witness of Scripture. In its scope I recognize the message of the entire Bible is not simply that God is great but that One so great has deigned to draw near. He is Immanuel, the God who chooses to be with us. Though his place is rightfully on heaven's throne, high and lifted up, still he comes from heaven through our history and into our hearts. He comes ever closer and draws us ever nearer to himself in the embrace of grace. The Scripture's chief intent (distilled from the accounts of kings and slaves, battles and plagues, heroes and cowards, patriarchs and apostles) is not a simply a parade of pageantry but a march of intimacy, as the God of heaven enters this earth to seek and save sinful men and women.
We will not underestimate the greater glory of this grace when we begin to take its measure. From where does the seraph take the coal to touch the unclean lips of the prophet? From the altar of sacrifice (vs. 6). We know the measure of this grace by the ultimate sacrifice required to satisfy the holiness of God. The smoke from the altar of sacrifice did not fade until God placed himself upon the altar in the person of our Savior. Ultimately our holiness was provided at the cost of the Lamb of God. The infinite gulf between human sin and divine holiness is bridged by the consummate love of an intimate Savior. The measure of this grace is evident in the distance it must travel to cover us.
-Made able to sing
The seraph takes a coal from the altar and touches the lips of the prophet. We hate the image. Think of how it would burn and hurt to have a burning coal touch your lips. Yet we need the image because of the grace it signifies in the sweet burning of a divine kiss. Because of this provision from the altar of atonement, Isaiah lips are made pure. This symbolizes that he is no longer unworthy to sing, "Holy, Holy, Holy." He can join the song of the angels. The reason is made clear in what the seraph says: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (vs. 7). Lips made worthy signify a life made pure. This symbolizes our great hope as well. Because of Christ’s atoning work, we too are made pure before God. His holiness becomes our own. Despite our sin and ruin, we too can join the songs of the angels as they praise God. We, too, are made worthy to praise our God by his great grace.
-Made ready to serve
Look how the apprehension of atoning grace finally affects Isaiah. The triune God asks, "Whom shall I send (with my message)? And who will go for us?" Then this same prophet, who before the holiness of God has been bowed to the dust in sinful desolation, utters this remarkable response, "Here am I. Send me." How could he say such a thing? He has just been devastated by the scourging radiance of God's holiness. How can he think he could minister in the Lord's name and perform such a God's purposes? Grace has touched him, and with it the power to do God's will has filled him.
What a lesson for us. The consolation of grace is what best equips us for the ministry of the greater glory. True, God requires broken people to seek him, but he wants mended people for his service. The repentance that is the emptying of self is not complete until we are filled with feasting upon his goodness, which strengthens us for the work of the Gospel. The answer to whether you have digested this grace in some measure lies in the willingness you have to serve him. Are you ready to serve him? The answer lies not only in what is in your head, but what is in your heart. Do you know the joy of his grace? And, the answer to that lies not only in whether you have perceived the great glory of the holiness of God, but in whether you have also perceived the greater glory of God providing his holiness for you.
The greatest glory of this passage we may be able to picture by thinking again of that newspaper front page that pictured the pageantry of power above the kiss in intimacy. I asked you to think of which of those photos depicted the greater glory. Was the greater glory in the great show of power and pomp, or in the display of tender intimacy for a diseased child? Whatever is your answer, I recognize that there is an even greater glory that could be displayed. The greatest glory of all would not be the picture of the president greeting dignitaries nor the mother extending a kiss to a diseased child. No, the greatest glory would have been a picture of the president kissing a diseased child. “Impossible,” you say. Yet, a greater picture appears before you in this text. The One whose holiness is the glory of heaven bows as low as these earthly ruins to kiss the sin diseased lips of sin-sick children like you and me. Our Savior took the disease of sin that should have devastated us on himself, so that now we may have the glory of his holiness. The Holy, Holy, Holy God set his affection on us with the sweet burning of a divine kiss that cost the life of his Son. When we sense deeply and daily the greatness of the grace in that holy kiss, then service to our Lord will be sweeter still, and the joy of serving him will be our greatest glory, too.
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