Isaiah 6:1 I. "I saw the Lord," etc. Some of you may have been watching a near and beautiful landscape in the land of mountains and eternal snows, till you have been exhausted by its very richness, and till the distant hills which bounded it have seemed, you knew not why, to limit and contract the... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:1 I. The spiritual or angelic life on earth consists not only of devotion. The seraph himself, though indeed the spirit of adoration is upon him always, is not always engaged in direct acts of praise. "With twain he did fly," speed forth, like lightning, upon the errands on which God sends... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:1 We have here in this wondrous vision the proper inauguration of the great evangelical prophet to his future work. I. First, he gives the date of the vision. "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord." What would he say but this: "In the year when the crowned monarch of the earth... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:1 I. Consider what the prophet saw. He sees Jehovah as Ruler, Governor, King; He is upon a throne, high and lifted up. It is the throne of absolute sovereignty: of resistless, questionless supremacy over all. He is in the temple where the throne is the mercy-seat, between the cherubim; over... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:2 Is it not strange, that of those parts of an angel's figure, which seem as if they were made only for action, four out of six are used for an entirely different purpose? It is to teach us, that it is not every power which we have and which we might think given us for public service, and... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:2 I. The seraphim, or burning ones these strange mystic creatures whom Isaiah beheld hovering above Jehovah's throne, and whose resounding cries pierced his soul. The first thing that strikes us is their redundance of wings. They each had six, only two of which were used for flying; the ot... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:3 I. The vision of God is the call of the prophet. Nowhere is the thought presented to us in the Bible with more moving force than in the record of Isaiah's mission. The very mark of time by which the history is introduced has a pathetic significance. It places together in sharp contrast th... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:5 The vision of Isaiah is a true symbol of the soul's progress. I. The first stage of the vision is the revelation of God in His glory and in His holiness. The spiritual being of man truly begins when he has seen God. This vision of God must be a moral vision, that is, the apprehension of... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:5 These verses teach us the essentials of true worship and of acceptable approach to God. And they seem to indicate these essentials as threefold, involving: I. A sense of personal wretchedness. To worship truly, there must be a sense of our own nothingness and need. The sense of wretched... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:6 There must be a relation between prayer and action: between prayer, which is the soul of the inward life; and action, which is the substance of the outward. I. Prayer is the preparation for action. What prayer is to preaching, that is action to prayer, its end and goal. That sermon is su... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:8 I. God often chooses marked seasons for His greatest self-manifestations; makes individual souls associate eventful days with their own more personal history. It was so with Isaiah. In that memorable year, naturally speaking, he himself was to see God. II. It is the sight of the King wh... [ Continue Reading ]
Isaiah 6:8 I. This, in all seeming, was the thankless office to which Isaiah was called, to be heard, to be listened to, by some with contempt, by others with seeming respect, and to leave things in the main worse than he found them. His office was towards those, in part at least, who were ever hea... [ Continue Reading ]