40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 6:1-7 (Episode 447)

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Isaiah explains how he came to the place of being God's Prophet. The Lord's robe fills the temple. Seraphim dare not look or tread near the holiness of God. And Isaiah's lips are too unclean to speak. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi Junk Drawer Jesus By Matt Popovits Signup For Free Advent Church Resources for 2024 Clothed with Christ by Brian William Thomas More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing. All the articles, all the other podcasts. Buy some books. Sign up for some academies.

All that stuff. There's so much to do. And, of course, one of the things to do is to hit that donate link. Become a contributor. You can help us keep doing what we're doing by making a one-time gift, sign up for a reoccurring gift. And thank you so much to those of you who do that. Chad, we are in Isaiah chapter 6 Going to take a turn

Last episode we got through chapter 5 A lot of woes A lot of woes to the wicked If you're the wicked, Isaiah's got a woe for you And it wasn't good news Woes are not typically What you want to hear And he dishes all those out

And then This is really like a turn In the book of Isaiah It's almost like um if you're watching a movie and the movie starts like in the middle of like something that you don't have any context for and and you're like well okay what's going on i need to pay attention here but i feel like i don't know how this started uh chapter six is the part in that movie where it goes back and it shows you and here's how i got to this place that i was

dishing out woes so yeah like who like why why are you the guy doing this isaiah what how did you get in this position uh well isaiah is going to tell you in chapter six here's how this came to be yeah this is like uh i see this all the time my wife and i'll be watching some episode i'll be like is this the beginning it's like starch and then it'll say you know seven days earlier yeah and then it'll flash back so yeah here's your flashback to however long ago from when isaiah was uh giving out the woes to when this all began actually so we're gonna jump into the call narrative isaiah 6 is probably one of the more well-known chapters i don't know probably isaiah 6 and 50 53 are probably the two chapters that people know maybe maybe chapter 7 but uh

It's certainly one of the top five most well-known chapters in Isaiah, and not only because of Isaiah the book, but also because some of the things that God says to Isaiah after he's called are going to pop up all over the place in the New Testament, especially in the Gospels. In fact, I think all four Gospels will quote the words from verses 9 and 10 about keep on hearing, but do not understand, keep on seeing, but do not perceive, that kind of language, especially in connection with the parables. So I think it pops up in the book of Acts as well. But anyway, these verses are quoted multiple times in the Gospels. So we'll spend some time talking about what those imply when we get to it. And also, I mean, this call scene is referred to by John the Evangelist, too, as we'll see momentarily in reference to, surprisingly, in reference to the Son of God, whose glory Isaiah saw. so there's a lot of a lot of crossover here between old and new testament and isaiah chapter six and even if that say say even if that didn't happen say that the new testament never quoted

isaiah six it would still be a highly significant chapter in isaiah just because it's his call narrative and the themes that he's going to introduce here are going to surface time and again through the rest of rest of the book yeah this is sort of like the part where maybe you're hearing all this stuff and you're like man you're really really sounds like you're speaking for god here guy uh and what and i'm interested uh what exactly qualifies you to say this to us right uh yeah i mean he's gonna tell you like well here's my credentials this is uh this is why yeah it'd be pretty hard to uh to somehow you know achieve something greater than these credentials it's like how do you how do you know how do we know you speak for god well let me tell

you what i saw one day let me tell you let me tell you what happened uh i mean it's somewhat not exactly but you know somewhat parallel to uh when christ appears to to saul on his way to damascus you know and saul repeats this multiple times as a way of demonstrating hey you know this is what happened and this is why i'm doing what i'm what i'm doing there's a lot you see that happened a number of times with people you have paul and he'll and he'll reference it and this with isaiah and there's lots of other stories even think about um the transfiguration and how many times you know peter james or john will bring it up but like this was like a pretty big moment like where um yeah i mean it wasn't necessarily like this like commissioning thing

but it was this sort of um it was a unique revelation right like there wasn't a lot of people there there was three of them that that saw it and they're and this this is pretty formative right so they'll be like listen uh i know this was the messiah like and it's and yeah like he rose from the dead and that's a pretty big deal um and that's how you can know but we kind of knew before that because we saw him hanging out with moses and elijah on top of a mountain yeah i think if i saw that or if i saw what happened in isaiah 6 uh people would get tired of me telling the story because I would never stop telling the story. I mean, you can't get more significant than this. So we began the book with Isaiah telling us that he was working, he was prophesying

during the reigns of certain kings. And one of those, of course, is Uzziah. In fact, if I can get back over here to chapter one, this is the way he begins. He says in verse one, the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah in Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah. And then he mentions also Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. So we're going to hear about the first of these guys at the beginning of chapter six. And then we're going to hear about another one of these in the beginning of chapter seven, Ahaz. So he's going to start off chapter six, referring to a king. He's going to start up chapter seven, referring to a king as well.

And I think it's appropriate the way it begins. It says, in the year that King Uzziah died. And that's appropriate because what have we just heard about? Well, you mentioned the woes, this list of woes. There's a lot of talk about death and darkness and destruction in not just chapter five, but really those first five chapters of the introduction to the entire book. So thematically, the death of Uzziah fits with everything that we've been hearing about. And when it begins that way, it makes you think, more death, you know, it's gonna be

more desolation, more hopelessness. And there is going to be certainly some of that, in fact, there's going to be more than some of that that surfaces in the chapter. But we also begin to see here the rising of hope in Isaiah, as well as this image of a remnant that's going to be saved and then spared and then ready for for sprouting again that we're going to get to at the end of into chapter six so we'll have some darkness we're going to have some light as as well so i'll just start out here with the first uh maybe four verses kind of get the scene and then we'll see what isaiah's response is to it 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. 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. And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. Yeah, that's not a scene that you forget. You're definitely going to remember that. So let's start out here where it begins in this year that King Uzziah died. This would have been around 740 BC. We know that King Uzziah, he had long

reign. He reigned 52 years. So he took the reign at the exact year that, at least in the U.S., teenagers can begin getting their driver's license. So 16 years old, he becomes king, and then he reigns for 52

years. So he's, you know, it depends on when his birthday was. He's around 68 years old when he dies. So we're middle of the 700s, around 740. Uzziah, who's also called Azariah, So the, if you want to look at the historical background of this, go back to second Kings chapter 15, that's going to kind of root you in the historical context.

So we're mid eighth century. It's been, you know, 52 over, over half a century that this guy has been reigning and his reign was, I mean, okay. He's all, he's the King that we know got full of himself. It's at one point we're told that he became strong and when he became strong, his heart became proud and that pride exhibited itself when he usurped the authority of the priest and he went into the holy place and there he began to burn incense was of course was the prerogative really the gift that god had given to the priest and so he begins to do this the

priest try and stop him drag him out and as this is happening he's inflicted with a skin disease leprosy or whatever whatever it was and he had that we're told to his dying day so he had to live in a separate house. And that's, you know, keep in mind that people would have known that. So that's kind of the background as well. So even his demise and the disease he had and all of that is a fitting thematic element to keep in mind as we're kind of transitioning from chapter five to chapter six. So in that year, he says, I saw the Lord. Now, if you're looking at your English bibles this is not the all caps signal for the divine name this is adonai which is a it's it's a distinctive form that is applied about i think 450 times or something like that in the old

testament to to yahweh so it doesn't say i saw yahweh it says i saw adonai there's no i mean we're referring to of course the same god but it's a different it's a different different terminology i'm going to come back to that in just a second so i saw the lord and what's he doing well he's enthroned he's sitting upon a throne he is high and lifted up and what's he what's he dressed in we're told that he has a robe on that the hymn or the train of his robe filled the temple now let me start there there's kind of a cool detail here if you if you go back in the hebrew for this hymn or train of his robe that occurs that word occurs multiple times in exodus to describe the vestments not of a king but of the high priest so i've i've always seen this this scene as kind of a

combination of of the regal and the priestly so the lord is sitting there as king i mean obviously he's on a throne right but because you have the language of a priestly vestment applied to him he's also in this and he's and he's where well he's in you know he's in the temple so that's the place of the priest so it's it's sort of a priestly kingly image he's dressed like a like a like a priest and he's seated upon a regal throne so he's kind of combining both these in his one person and the fact that adonai is used here uh is uh is a is a i think a perfect segue to how this pops up in in the gospels because of course when you turn to what's the uh what's the verse there is that uh it's john 12 right yeah yeah so yeah john 12 actually quotes isaiah 6

and then about blinding the eyes and hurting the heart and then immediately after that john writes this is john 12 i believe verse 41 isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him so when john is talking about isaiah 6 and referring to the glory and isaiah's speech concerning the one upon the throne he identifies him as none other than than the son of god so here we have a clear christophany yeah i mean so one of the things that that's cool about this one is that um it is always weird like i mean i guess you don't want to you put the lord there um it's a it's weird to me when they when they do that um because there's not like you're inserting a the and then you have like lord there uh and like when you it makes more sense you know

when you have like the divine name for god and it's like the definite article all caps lord like that works um like the you wouldn't say i saw the adonai you wouldn't say that you know so it's a a weird like uh but whatever you don't want to put adenai there that's fine um one of the things that i think is cool about this is that you do have him on the throne in the temple and his robe is like like filled up like filled up and you're like what like what's the significance of that like what why does it matter if his robe fills the temple like that seems like is that just like uh cool imagery or does it mean anything and i and i you might have thoughts on this chad but to me i always thought like there's only one person in this temple wearing like his robe

fills up like the whole thing there are no other vestments like there's it's not like other priests or it's just him right and so like his robe is enough uh in fact there you couldn't have more robes in here like this his this his train is filling up this whole temple don't even think about trying to bring in some different priest or another priest you don't need him it's a one garment closet yes i'm the only one that's wearing these vestments in here there you couldn't bring more vestments in here if you wanted to yeah that's great that is great yeah and then that fits perfectly with the fact that so when you do see for instance the high priest or even other priest whoever and you think about them ministering inside the temple maybe they're dealing with the

showbread or maybe they're trimming the lamps on the candelabra or maybe they're standing in front of the altar of incense well you're really you're not seeing multiple priests you're seeing a manifestation of those who hold the office which represents the one priest yeah that's one way to one way to think about this yeah this is a way of saying like his priestlyness has filled up the entirety of the temple yeah that no there is no other representation needed or representatives need it or lesser priests need it. That's all unnecessary. His priestliness is more than enough. Yeah. And this is so beautiful when you think about what John says, that Isaiah said this because he saw his glory. And that means that already in this vision we have of the Son of God

in the Old Testament, he's in the temple. He is filling the entire temple. He is divine, obviously he's adonai uh but he uh also then is a king and a priest already already pictured here in this way and the the priestly nature of jesus of course comes up multiple times in hebrews that's where it's the main that's where you're gonna that's the new testament book where you see it the most but you know when the in the opening chapters of revelation you do too he's uh there when the son of god appears he's dressed in priestly garb and he's got the the lamp stands around him so christ dressed as a priest is not only here in isaiah 6 but you'll also see that in revelation chapter 1 yeah it does it does it does seem to like the

like the when you have like this kind of imagery and then you have this seraphim and you're like what's the deal with this so you have like six wings and and it seems like the seraphim is like man it's a good thing i got six wings because i'm gonna need to fly of course but i'm also going to need to be covering my eyes and i'm definitely because i dare not look at this uh cover my feet because i dare not tread on this uh so i i'm just kind of circling about maybe uh not covering my face covering my feet and uh and then and then crying out uh holy holy is the lord of hosts right i mean is that is that what you take away from this that is like that you're like this is uh no because you know you have to understand like that you're like why

Like, okay, maybe you can wrap your head around, and you've seen this a lot, where you're not going to stare at the glory of God. And we're going to see Isaiah is going to be a little undone here. You're going to get the distinct impression that Isaiah thinks he's seeing something that he's not supposed to see. Yeah. Right? He is unworthy to behold this. And that's another place in the Scripture we see that people would say, and God will say, hey, you can't just stare directly into my glory. Like, what are you, nuts?

uh so even the seraphim seemed like he's like yeah i'm not i'm not i'm not gonna like gaze into it i'm not doing that but then the feet thing is that this is the most unclean thing about a person or a creature is their feet uh certainly we don't necessarily think that now uh in the same way but we're also not wearing sandals and treading through dirt and stuff all over the place and And so it's not just that I'm not going to look at it, or I'm not going to tread on it, but I'm also going to cover my eyes lest I look at it, and cover my feet, because even though I'm not going to go down there and walk around on that, I don't even want the Lord to see the most unclean thing about me.

Yeah. Yeah, I think this has come up before in our discussions of the priesthood, but when the priests served in the tabernacle or the temple. In the long list of vestments, everything from the caps they were to wear all the way down to, you know, their robes, there is no mention of the shoes, and that's because they served barefoot. And they did that because shoes were considered to be unclean. You see that, of course, in Exodus chapter 3, where God tells Moses to take off his shoes, or in those opening chapters of Joshua, where the commander of the Lord's army which i consider to be the son of god too tells joshua to take off your take off your shoes

so yeah and if and by comparison if even the seraphim who serve right there in the lord's presence and who call out holy holy holy holy if they must cover their eyes and cover their feet well then you know what must sinners do yeah you know give us like 50 wings so we can cover the entirety of of who we are because we uh we're certainly not worthy or clean enough to stand stand in his presence well this is why like there there's such an offense right i mean like peter is uh appalled when jesus would get down on his hands and knees and start washing his feet i mean of all the things that jesus does and you're like uh this was like the line right it's like no No, no, no, no, no.

We're not – you can't do that. This is – why does Peter object to that? Because this is his master. This is not just like a little bit, but radically beneath him. I can't allow that. Of course, Jesus is like, oh, my humiliation is going to go much, much further than this. Yeah, if you think this is bad, you've seen nothing yet. It's going to get way worse.

but uh but yeah but that's what peter is objecting to right is that you can't touch my feet like you're i'm i'm over here giving up everything believing that uh you're the anointed one i sure as heck can't have you touching my feet like that would that would that would uh that would be an assault on everything that i think you are yeah so before we we'll move on and just second before we do i want to say just one thing about the seraphim if you uh If you check in the scholarly resources or commentaries on this, a lot of times you'll hear that the seraphim are serpentine figures. In fact, I looked at several resources this morning and they say that. And the reason they do is because when this word occurs in many other contexts,

it's often linked to serpents, to serpentine kind of figures. Now, the word itself behind seraphim is seraph and the verbal form of that means to to burn so it's often understood according to its etymology as like burning ones or fiery ones so there's a one of the articles i was reading this morning said that you know possibly these are serpentine figures with human-like characteristics as as well and i mean possibly one thing that i i do you know find somewhat humorous is that But in the midst of all these arguments about, you know, these being serpentine figures, no one refers to the fact that we are told explicitly they have feet, which serpents do not have. So we're not told what they look like. Maybe they were serpentine in appearance.

That's not the way that I typically think of them. I think of them as more having more human characteristics. but yeah let me make a an all the way back argument uh not that not that i think this is that important but more just interesting um because to to your feet point of this where it's like oh these are these like kind of like snaky kind of creatures here when you're like they got feet uh but if you think about the fall of the devil uh and if you if you're and this is a created being and uh and he's a serpentine figure to be sure in the garden uh okay so you're like a fallen angelic creature uh you're you're referenced as like a dragon or a serpent but

dragons are also old school dragons are very serpentine as well yes um but the curse is that he's not going to have no feet anymore yeah he's gonna he's gonna crawl on his belly he's gonna crawl on his belly and so if you're wondering like well what's that about like snakes don't have feet and you're like well maybe the seraphim do seraphim do and i don't and he if he's some sort of um demonic seraphim kind of figure uh this would this would maybe make sense is it important no is it interesting i don't know maybe a little bit it's gonna yeah it's it's it's a cool connection so if these are serpent figures with feet then they would be the antithesis of the fallen serpent who must crawl about with dust as his dust as his food

yeah there you go could be yeah you guys could be you guys can you'll find someone that uh thinks that's the most important thing and go have a good discussion with them about it yeah so seraphim and they're chanting of course the uh what's often called the uh trisagion which just means the the thrice holy holy holy holy is yahweh sabioth and in this case it's not adonai it is yahweh is yahweh sabioth the lord of hosts the whole earth is full of his glory don't you don't you love don't you love that by the way you have all of this language like so far about like the earth being basically full of evil and wickedness and unrighteousness and god is like about to have to bring down judgment and these these guys flying around saying the whole earth

is full of his glory and uh and then you you have to like hold these two things in tension where like we're like the the earth is full of unrighteousness and wickedness and injustice and yet full of the glory of god and of course this is because god only creates good things And then even in the midst of sin and the world falling into disorder, from an angelic perspective, they still see a thing that was spoken into existence by God. And they're like – you can sort of see through all of that and still see the glory of God pervasive. Not just like, hey, there's – in the earth, there are glimpses of God's glory. No, that's not what he says at all. He says the whole earth is full of it.

Like, I can't look anywhere in the earth and not see it. I think that this is a good—because I think this is true, and I think that the Christian can have this same perspective. Because, look, man, you can easily say the earth is full of wickedness and sin, and you don't have to look hard to see it. You can—the whole earth is full of it. You can look anywhere and see it. And if that's what you're looking for, that's what you'll find. however like i would i would argue that the earth is still full of the glory of god as well and if you're looking for that you'll see it yeah yeah you could is there's a there's a heavenly and

earthly perspective right i mean you can certainly find bad everywhere you look in the world but you can also find good everywhere you look in the world when you consider that a good god made this good creation and it remains that uh essentially even though it's corrupted of course at the same time i love how the uh this particular part of the holy holy holy has uh has made its way into into christian worship i mean you could find it all kinds of christian churches it's in roman catholic it's an eastern orthodox it's an anglican it's in various uh protestant churches in in our own tradition uh a part of this hymn is sung right in the in the service leading leading up to the Lord's Supper. So Holy, Holy, Holy is

Sanctus is what it's often referred to from its Latin title. Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of your glory. And then it goes on, Hosanna in the highest. So it's a beauty in the singing of this song or canticle in the worship service. It's a combination of the Psalm 18, or Psalm 118 rather, which happened, which was sung on Palm Sunday as Christ rode into Jerusalem. And also then Isaiah 6 with the Holy, Holy, Holy.

And the idea is, as we're getting ready for the Lord's Supper, we are, we've entered into the heavenly sphere. Heaven is present on earth. Christ is present with all the heavenly hosts. And just like the seraphim sang these words, so now the saints here on earth sing these words because we join with the angelic choir in singing before the presence of the Holy, Holy, Holy Lord of Hosts who is among us and is about to give us his gifts.

Well, and you know what I love about—I really like that. And one of the reasons I like it is that, yeah, you have this acknowledgment. So you're joining in, you're saying, Holy, Holy, Holy. You're saying the earth is full of his glory, and there's like the body and blood of Christ is typically sitting up there. And you're saying, like, I've seen—you're about to— It's almost like your eyes have beheld the glory of God at this point, which is like in these simple and seemingly insignificant things. And as you say that, where you say that, okay, so God is this thrice holy God, and then you couple it with this Hosanna in the highest, which is your acknowledgement of what you're asking him to do and what he's there to do, which is to save you, because this is what Hosanna means.

So like Hosanna, I think sometimes we think of Hosanna as the same thing as hallelujah or something. It's just like some kind of Bible way of saying it. Yeah, it's a Bible praise word. Who knows what it means? God likes it, though. He likes it when you say it, and it means something about like some ecstatic utterance in a language that we no longer speak. But man, God likes it. but that's not it at all of hosanna just means save us or save now or however you want to translate

but you're it's crying out for salvation and so yeah like when you're when you're right before the lord's supper if you're acknowledging that there's a there's a holy god here uh and what i need him to do is save me and the good news is what he's here to do is save you you save you Yeah. Yeah. The Hebrew root behind save is the same one that we get in Jesus' own name. Yeah. He's the one who will save us from our sins. So it's like you're saying, save us, Jesus us, right? Give us yourself, save us. And the fact that it's conjoined then with the holiness of God means the holiness of God has not come here to wipe us out, but rather it's come to save us. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, such a lot of beautiful theology, Christology, that's packed into these verses. It must be, since we spent 30 minutes on three verses. Yeah, we're making some rapid headway here.

Well, the physical effects, as far as just the edifice itself, you get the whole thing, and it's shaking. The foundations of the thresholds are shaking at the voice of him who called. the house is filled with with smoke which is probably i'm guessing an image of the incense that's that's filling up the the temple which of course would have had its own you know its odor so you got the sights you got the feels you got the smells you got all this stuff going on and poor isaiah which is this is verse five so i'll just read uh the one verse versus verse five This is his reaction to all of this.

I said, woe is me, for I am lost. I'll come back to that word. It can be translated a couple different ways, but ESV has, I am lost. I think King James was undone. Why? For I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord, the Lord of hosts. So, yeah, woe is me.

That's Isaiah's response. He doesn't say, hallelujah. Man, I'm seeing the seraphim. I'm seeing the son of God enthroned here. I'm smelling the incense. I'm sitting here shaking along with the thresholds. He's like, no, man, I'm done for. This is it.

Woe is me. So that word lost can be translated a couple different ways. So it's a, you know, the issue here is, is homonyms. So you got, you got words that, you know, look, sound the same. And in Hebrew here, you have, you have two, two, there are two different words. They're spelled the same, dama. In English, it'd be like D-M-H. And one does mean to be destroyed, but the other one means to be silent.

And I'm kind of torn here as to which, which way I want to go. because on the one hand i like the i like the idea of i'm i'm destroyed i'm lost i'm undone but i also like the the idea of silence or silenced i can't speak because of what he immediately says afterward i'm a man of unclean lips he focuses upon his his speech so i don't know what the best way to translate that is one of these where you got to make a decision but that's the background it can it can mean either either one of those it's either i'm lost undone destroyed or i'm i'm struck mute maybe is the the way that you could kind of render you're speechless because there you have no clean speech i dare not say anything uh because anything that

would pass through my lips is going to be unclean what am i what am i supposed to do here uh i do like that he uh i say it's like listen long before uh i said what was you i said what was me right so like this woe this woe is not just reserved for the masses but he's like i was i i too was in a position of of woe and uh and what and the question that if you kind of pause right here then it's like what can be done then uh isaiah's wishing he had some wings but he didn't so uh no covering his face no covering his feet he's just uh left there exposed and this this is where you get the hosanna in right here, right? Like, what's going to happen to you?

You're going to be in the presence of a holy God with unclean lips, and you can't cover yourself with wings. You're just there, kind of sort of naked and exposed before God, and you find out what God's prerogative really is. Yeah, this is the... Well, you alluded to this earlier.

This is the cry of many people who have, maybe not in these words, but when they've seen God, they're like, what am I going to do? Often it's afterward. They're looking at themselves like, wait, I'm still alive and I saw God? I can't believe that I survived that.

Here, he doesn't know what's going to happen yet, but he's like, I'm done for because I've seen the king, the Lord of hosts. I have actually laid my eyes on none other than Yahweh himself, the king of kings and the Lord of lords. And the answer, by the way, for what you're going to do is nothing. There's nothing for you to do. This is the pause. It's nice that they put a little gap here in the verses. This is the pause where you're going to do nothing. Everything comes down to what is God going to do?

Because you have no power here. You're completely exposed. Any words you say will just increase your condemnation. right so uh now that the ball is officially in god's court uh at this point yeah which is the way this is you know entirely meant to be this is the whole setup but he doesn't say oh i know what i'll do you know i'll whatever no just say your confession and then shut up and let god do his work so the work is what's described in verses six and seven then one of the seraphim and i wish we knew how many there were seraphim is just plural could be two three four yeah okay seven

yeah we'll go i love that so one of the seraphim uh flew to me and what did he have he had in his hand a a burning coal live coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar i love the fact that Even angels can't handle live coals. He's like, you got any tongs here I can use? This also makes me believe that this seraphim has hands. I don't know if you've ever tried to use tongs, but it seems like you need fingers and thumbs for those. Right, yeah.

So he's got his wings. He flies. But first he goes and gets a tong. And then he goes to the altar, and he's got this burning coal. Now this is so perfect for so many reasons. I mean, we all know what the altar is for, of course. The altar is for sacrifice. That's what it's for.

The altar is the place of atonement. The altar is a place where blood is shed. The altar is a place where sins are atoned for. And you have this blood that's right there from this altar of atonement. And the angel has it in the tongue. And what's he going to do? Well, he flies to Isaiah, and then we're told he touched my mouth. So he does the action.

You have the physicality of it. He actually touches the mouth of Isaiah, the mouth that had just said, I'm lost. I'm a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. And then the angel says this, behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for. There you go. God took care of it.

Well, it's great, and we won't get into this until next episode, but the thing that's great is that God is going to ask a question, and Isaiah is going to answer this question. He's going to respond to it. But certainly before Isaiah can give the response to the question, he's going to need to have his guilt taken away and his sin atoned for. And this is the thing that happens where you're confronted with God, and you could not possibly speak to God. You could have nothing to say to God until this remarkable thing happens where all of your sin is taken away, and now you can speak with God.

uh it almost it it's like when uh when the uh when the curtain is torn in the temple you know like all of a sudden your relationship with god because of forgiveness and atonement is completely changed yeah yeah there's there's no more fear afterward like can i open my lips now of course you can because it's taken care of yeah your guilt is taken away your sin is it your sin is atoned for and uh just to add one more thing you know getting back to what we were just discussing this is this is why one of the reasons why holy holy holy is the lord of hosts is sung in preparation for the lord's supper because it's such a such a perfect lead-in to that you know that's you're taking into you the body blood of our lord and as a result your guilt is taken away and your sin is

is atoned for all because of the sacrifice that christ has made for us yeah we did six verses is seven verses seven verses a very biblical number of verses for one episode that's it man hey this is one this is one of those dense chapters so i'm not i'm not surprised we didn't make it all the way through i've i wouldn't have if you'd asked me to put money on it beforehand i would have said no i don't think we're i don't think we're gonna make it but and and we and we got good stuff coming up uh like this is not isaiah has not been commissioned yet he's just uh he's just been placed in front of god and had his sins forgiven which is pretty great and we'll see what god's gonna do with a with a forgiven sinner we'll see what we'll see what he has in store for him

uh next episode sounds good see you then i'll see you then chad Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh