Isaiah 6:8-10

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 hearing, never doing, and so never understanding. The more they heard and saw, the farther they were from understanding, from being converted, from the reach of healing. And what said the prophet? Contrary as the sentence must have been to all the yearnings of his soul, crushing to his hopes, he knew that it must be just, because "the Judge of the whole world" must do right. He intercedes, but only by these three words: "Lord, how long?" This question implied a hope that there would be an end; the answer "until" implied that there would be an end.

II. Where there is desolation for the sake of God, there is also consolation. Isaiah had not seen the Beatific Vision. Not with his bodily eyes did he behold God, nor with his bodily ears did he hear His words; but to his inward sight did God disclose some likeness, whereby he should understand the nature of the Divine Essence, how God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in-exists in Himself; although the Beatific Vision, as He is, was reserved for the life to come. So God prepared him to be above all others, even of the goodly company of the prophets the evangelic prophet, in that he had seen the glory of the Lord. This, then, is ever his consolation, this his joy in trouble, this his life in death. The surges of this world, higher and higher as they rose, only bore his soul upward toward his God. He, too, was a man of longing. In the darkness of the world God ever brings this light before him, his darkest visions are the dawn-streaks of the brightest light.

E. B. Pusey, Lenten Sermons,p. 466.

References: Isaiah 6:8. S. Cox, Expositor,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 217. Isaiah 6:9. J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons,vol. ii., p. 48. Isaiah 6:9; Isaiah 6:10. M. Nicholson, Redeeming the Time,p. 125; E. W. Shalders, Expositor,1st series, vol. vii., p. 471.Isaiah 6:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iii.,. No. 121. 6 P. Thomson, Expositor,1st series, vol. xl., p. 119. Isaiah 7:6. E. H. Plumptre, Ibid.,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 236. Isaiah 7:9. I. Williams, Sermons on the Epistles and Gospels,vol. ii., p. 353.