CHAPTER 6

(760 B.C.)

ISAIAHS VISION AND COMMISSION

¹In 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. (That which Isaiah saw, Who is Jehovah, was actually a preincarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ, and is declared so by the Holy Spirit in Jn. 12:37-41. It places Jehovah, Jesus the Saviour, in the midst of guilty and lost men, just as He is seen at Golgotha, for there they crucified two thieves with Him, placing Him in their midst.

It is believed that king Uzziah died in 759 B.C.)

²Above it stood the Seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. (The word Seraphim means fiery ones. This is the only mention of these celestial beings in Scripture. These Seraphim were stationed above the Throne of God and appear to have led in Divine Worship.

In the light of the Throne, Isaiah learned that he was a moral leper, that his people were moral lepers, and that they altogether were as vile as king Uzziah.

If the sinless Seraphim, in the Presence of the thrice-Holy Lord of Hosts, had to veil both their faces and their feet, then how hopeless was it for a moral leper such as Isaiah to stand in such a light!)

³And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of Hosts: the whole Earth is full of His Glory. (The phrase, one cried, means kept crying. Day and night they are saying, Holy, Holy, Holy. The triple repetition of Holy, Holy, Holy has been understood in all ages of the Church as connected with the Doctrine of the Trinity.)

⁴And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him who cried, and the House was filled with smoke. (First of all, let us look at the energy of the worship conducted here. So vigorous was this act that the thresholds of the Divine Temple shook, and the Holy Place was filled with smoke.)

⁵Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; 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. (In Chpt. 5, Isaiah had pronounced six Woes! upon Judah; now he pronounces one on himself!

The sinless King of this Verse is to be contrasted with the leprous king of Verse 1.

The word undone means justly doomed to death. Such thought is the product of true Repentance. What Isaiah saw produced in him a deep feeling of unworthiness.)

⁶Then 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 (Isaiah needed a cleansing and a covering of his sin. The living coal from off the Altar of Burnt Offering, symbolizing the fire of the Wrath of God and the Blood of the Lamb of God, when brought in contact with his unclean lips, removed his iniquity and expiated his sin.

The Altar represented Calvary, to which sinful man is exposed before he can be cleansed and Saved. The essence of true conviction is a deep overwhelming concern over what I am, not so much what I have done or not done. It is more important what man is than what he has done, and man is a sinner.

Genuine moral cleansing must be carried out in the heart of the sinner in order to be saved, and that can only be accomplished by Faith in the shed Blood of Christ, of which this was a symbol [Rom. 3:24-25; Heb. 9:22; I Pet. 1:18-23; I Jn. 1:7-9]):

⁷And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged. (There is no other way to be cleansed and expiated than through the Wrath of God and the Atoning Blood of Christ. These are revealed and glorified at Calvary. There, God judged sin infinitely and eternally in the Person of Christ, and His Precious Blood shed there is the one and only and perfect expiation for cleansing of sin.)

⁸Also 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. (As in the case of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus [Acts, Chpt. 9], true conversion manifested itself here in surrender and activity.

The pronoun Us suggests the Trinity.)

⁹And He said, Go, and tell this people, Hear you indeed, but understand not; and see you indeed, but perceive not. (The command was, Go, and tell.)

¹⁰Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. (Isaiah is commanded to effect, by his preaching, that which his preaching would in fact bring about. It would not awaken the people out of their apathy; it would not stir them to Repentance. Instead, it would only harden and deaden them. These words have a national as well as an individual application.

He was commanded to Go, but yet he is told that there will be no favorable response.)

¹¹Then said I, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate (the answer to the question of this Verse is found in Rom. 11:25; it is faith alone that could ask this question; this blindness will rest on Israels heart until the consummation of the judgment inflicted on her),

¹²And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. (This was fulfilled in totality. In A.D. 70, Israel was totally destroyed, with millions of Jews scattered all over the world, and remaining in that posture until 1948.)

¹³But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof. (The meaning of the first part of this Verse is that if there be only a tenth of the population left in the country, then this, too, shall be destined to further judgment and destruction. Yet there is a Holy Promise in this Passage!

The teil tree and the oak tree are types of trees which shoot up again from the stump after being cut down. There will remain a holy seed that will be hidden, a living root cherished by Israels faithful God, and the day will come when that root will spring up into a greater and fairer tree than it ever was in the past [Rom. 11:16-18, 23-27].)