Isaiah 6:3

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 the hasty presumption of man and the unchanging love of God. Isaiah, a layman, was, it appears, in the temple court, and he saw in a trance the way into the holiest place laid open. He beheld not the glory resting upon the symbolic ark, but the Lord sitting upon the throne, high and lifted up; not the carved figures of angels, but the seraphim standing with outstretched wings, ready for swift service; not the vapour of earthly incense, but the cloud of smoke which witnessed to the majesty which it hid. This opening of "the eyes of his heart" was God's gift, God's call to him. For an eternal moment Isaiah's senses were unsealed. He saw that which is, and not that which appears when we recall what Judaism was at the time, local, rigid, exclusive. We can at once understand that such a vision, such a revelation taken into the soul, was for Isaiah an illumination of the world. He could at last see all creation in its true nature through the light of God. Humbled and purified in his humiliation, he could have but one answer when the voice of the Lord required a messenger: "Here am I; send me."

II. As the vision of God is the call of the prophet, so it is this vision which the prophet has to proclaim and to interpret to his fellow-men, not as an intellectual theory, but as an inspiration of life. The prophet's teaching must be the translation of his experience. He bears witness of that which he has seen. His words, are not an echo, but a living testimony. The heart alone can speak to the heart. But he who has beheld the least fragment of the Divine glory, he who has spelt out in letters of light on the face of the world one syllable of the Triune Name, will have a confidence and a power which nothing else can bring. Only let him trust what he has seen, and it will become to him a guiding star till he rests in the unveiled presence of Christ.

III. The vision of God is also the chastening of the prophet. And in the fulfilment of our prophetic work we need more than we know the abasing and elevating influences which the vision of Isaiah and the thoughts of today are fitted to create or deepen. For our strengthening and for our purifying, we must seek for ourselves, and strive to spread about us the sense of the awfulness of being, as those who have seen God at Bethlehem, Calvary, Olivet, and on the throne encircled by a rainbow as an emerald; the sense, vague and imperfect at the best, of the illimitable range of the courses and issues of action; the sense of the untold vastness of that life which we are content to measure by our feeble powers; the sense of the majesty of Him before whom the angels veil their faces.

B. F. Westcott, Christus Consummator,p. 163.

I. Two of the Divine attributes form the theme of the seraphs' hymn: God's holiness as inherent in Himself; His glory as manifested in the earth. Holiness, the first of these, denotes, fundamentally, a state of freedom from all imperfection, specially from all moral imperfection; a state, moreover, realised with such intensity as to imply not only the absence of evil, but antagonism to it. It is more than goodness, more than purity, more than righteousness; it embraces all these in their ideal completeness, but it expresses besides the recoil from everything which is their opposite.

II. But not only does the seraphic hymn celebrate the Divine nature in its own transcendent purity and perfection, it celebrates it as it is manifested in the material world: "the fulness of the whole earth is His glory." By "glory" we mean the outward show or state attendant upon dignity or rank. The glory, then, of which Isaiah speaks, is the outward expression of the Divine nature. Pictured as visible splendour, it may impress the eye of flesh; but any other worthy manifestation of the being of God may be not less truly termed His glory. It is more than the particular attribute of power or wisdom; it is the entire fulness of the Godhead, visible to the eye of faith, if not to the eye of sense, in the concrete works of nature, arresting the spectator and claiming from him the tribute of praise and homage.

III. Wherein does the world so reflect the being of God as to be the expression of His glory? It is visible (1) in the fact, as such, of creation; (2) in the means by which an abode has been prepared for the reception of life and intelligence, and the majestic scale upon which the process has been conceived and carried out; (3) in the rare and subtle mechanism which sustains the world in every part, and the intrinsic adequacy and beauty of the results.

IV. Can we trace any evidence of the moral character of God, or is the earth full merely of the tokens of His power? It is difficult to think that we are mistaken in tracing it in the constitution of human nature, in the affections and aspirations which it displays, in the conditions upon which social life is observed to depend. He who has inspired human nature with true impulses of justice and generosity, of sympathy and love, with admiration for the heroic and noble, with scorn for the ignoble and the mean, cannot but be possessed of a kindred character Himself. Though the rays are broken and the image is obscured, the moral glory of the Creator shines in the world; it is reflected in the verdict of the individual conscience; it is latent in the ethical sanctions upon which the permanence and welfare of society depends.

S. R. Driver, The Anglican Pulpit of To-Day,p. 456.

References: Isaiah 6:3. B. F. Westcott, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. v., p. 363; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. viii., p. 336, and vol. xviii., p. 280; F. Godet, Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 110; J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension Day to Trinity Sunday,p. 364; J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. vi., p. 362.Isaiah 6:4. S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year,vol. ii., p. 33.