The Third Reliable Sign: Seeing the Beauty of Holiness (Part 1)

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1 Dartmouth Bible Notes Notes from the Pulpit Ministry of Dartmouth Bible Church Series: Unreliable and Reliable Signs of True Spirituality (Lesson 13) Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-7 Speaker: Rev. Neil C. Damgaard, Th.M., D.Min. Date: February 5 th, 2017 The Third Reliable Sign: Seeing the Beauty of Holiness (Part 1) Isaiah 6: 1-7 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory. At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. Woe to me! I cried. I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. Introduction Last week our daughter Susanna was climbing Citlaltépetl in southern Mexico. They began a 7-hour climb before dawn and summited at 18,491 ft. on Jan. 29 th. She reported that it was seven hours incredible and the most painful thing I have ever done. As I imagine the feeling of being so high, and in such a pristine place, it perfectly leads into what I wanted to preach on this week. The third of Jonathan Edwards Reliable signs of true spirituality is SEEING THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.

2 Citlaltépetl is holy in that it is wholly other; it is separate; it is clean and pure and apart from all else. It is the second highest volcano in the world (and called a stratovolcano). It is high and lifted up and while dormant it is not extinct. (It last erupted in the 1800s.) And from the pictures I have seen thus far it is no hard sell for its beauty. I can well understand Susanna s attraction to the beauty and to the holiness 2

3 of such a place, and the commitment to see it. She also tells me though that there is really no more closeness to God up there, as beautiful and remote as it is at 18,491 feet. (She has also climbed both Mount Ranier 1 and Mount Hood 2 ). I was kind of gratified to hear that because we are so often wowed by people that go to high mountains or to deep waters or into space even and find God waiting there, when the rest of us will never do such treks. We find ourselves consigned to the super-mundane of driving up and down Route 6 or maybe biking along Cape Cod or maybe even riding the Cog Railway a time or two up Mount Washington (6,288 feet). We seek the beauty of holiness from the God who MADE Citlaltépetl and the Mariana Trench and the moon. And He is the only God, there is none other. And He is wholly other. He is the sovereign Majesty. And He sent His only begotten Son into this world at a distinct point in time and for a specific purpose. I think one of the most astounding and powerful passages in the whole Bible is this one in Isaiah 6. It was probably about the year 740 B.C. but it is one of those biblical glimpses that is really OUT of time. Let s walk through it: Isaiah 6:1 (ESV) 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. Where was Isaiah? Who cares? How old was he? Who cares? Was he married or did he have children? Who cares? He wrote that he saw the Lord. That in itself is devastating! This is one of those biblical moments that is out of time! Everything in human experience somehow becomes small for a person who has a moment like this Jacob has such a memorable moment. 3 Moses has such a moment in front of the burning bush. 4 Peter and James and John have such a moment twice when Jesus was baptized, and when He was transfigured in front of them and Elijah and Moses showed up! 5 John again has such a moment as an old man on the island of Patmos. 6 To SEE the Lord must have instantly changed him for life. Somehow his human eyes, limited to 430 to 770 Terahertz were empowered to see more than that relatively narrow band width! He saw the LORD. And the Lord was sitting. He wasn t standing, leaning, squatting, lying down or running, at that moment. 1 14,411 ft. elevation 2 11,249 ft. elevation 3 Genesis 32: Exodus 3: Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:2-8; Luke 9: Revelation 1:9-17 3

4 He was sitting and on a throne a thing we tend to think is distinctly human. But the prototype of throne is what God sits on. I don t think its some cheesy chair. I don t think it is some gaudy Romanesque thing. I think it must be timelessly beautiful and glorious, completely appropriate and congruent with God. Isaiah said that God was high and exalted. How can we even guess what that means except that he, Isaiah, was far lower than the Lord. Exalted there was nothing casual about God. There was nothing tentative about His station. He shared it with no one. And an interesting detail I almost don t want to call it interesting It is an awesome detail the train of His robe filled the temple. This place is called a temple and a house. And the Lord is robed in a very long and incredible robe which suggests that Isaiah is being given a vision of God where God is personlife. This shouldn t confuse us. The Bible says people are created in God s image not the reverse. It s not just how Isaiah interprets it. It is as he saw it. Isaiah 6:2 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. There was more than one seraph. This is a creature that is only here and in verse 6 in the whole Bible. Isaiah describes them pretty specifically. Every detail of this throne-place, is important. There is no more important place in the universe, or in ANY universe. It is eternal and static but not boring. The very place is alive! These seraphs (seraphim is plural in Hebrew) have six wings. That must be deliberate. They didn t randomly grow six wings. They are created creatures and they are still there at this very moment. And I note that what is used to cover their faces is actually part of them. They need something permanent, organically part of their being to do the covering for which they are never off-duty. It s cool to think about but for Isaiah, one day in 740 B.C., it burned him down! Isaiah 6:3 And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! And Isaiah heard their voices I can only fantasize as to what those voices sounded like. Their text was simple and elegantly powerful and straightforward. Three times they call out the single, all-capturing nature of God: Holy, holy, holy. And IS the Lord of hosts. I know no other attribute of God which is so overwhelming to a heavenly creature that he would triple its proclamation! Hosts means extremely large, in fact innumerable crowds. God is above all crowds, even of angels. He is the LORD of all crowds! And then, there is no place 4

5 on this planet that is hidden or shielded or just not interested in His glory! then wrote in vs. 4 He Isaiah 6:4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. In the awesome, out-of-time moment in which Isaiah was, with the seraphim hovering and calling out, there was a shaking in the floor when they spoke. The house filled with smoke. This is awesomeness to the ultimate. Why did this occur? I don t know. It just did. Isaiah 6:5 And I said: Woe is me! For I am lost; for 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! Isaiah feels undone. In the presence and the beauty of holiness he is suddenly aware that he is not a citizen of that place. He can offer no special pass or excuse. He is not from there. He remembers where he was from and he is ashamed. No seraph or angel of any kind and God Himself has not had to give Isaiah proof of indictment. He just knows! It is for no other reason than what he has seen. Even when this moment passes and all the rest of his life is before him I think he will never quite recover from this pre-death vision he was given. He can and will endure great trouble in the days and months which follow, but no trouble will erase what he now knows. But the scene is not done yet. Isaiah 6:6,7 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. In this place there was an altar with a pan apparently of burning coals. Here is where liberal thinkers and people of no faith will desperately scramble to see something ELSE here. Symbolism. Metaphor. Allegory. Hallucination. Why can it not be simply what this man saw? Isaiah saw a vision of God that overwhelmed him. God was too beautiful for even the seraphim to fully gaze upon Him. Isaiah automatically grasped his own ill-equipped nature to be there. And one of these creatures incalculably ancient, possessing their own unique separateness and holiness, takes tongs and picks up a burning coal and flew over to where Isaiah was standing remember? Two wings were for flying. Note here the stupidness of the popular myth that angels have wings. No angel is ever said to have wings. Cherubim and seraphim have wings. 7 7 Exodus 25:20 and Ezekiel 10 and Isaiah 6 5

6 That s it. So the next time someone says something about angel-wings tell them to stop being ignorant. (But be nice about it!) And he flies over to Isaiah and simply touched his lips. We are crass enough to admit, Didn t it burn his lips? Didn t it hurt? But Isaiah mentions nothing so trite or temporary. The seraph (wouldn t you like to know what that voice sounded like?) says your guilt is taken away and your guilt is atoned for. So Isaiah was a sinner and guilty? Yes. Of what? Of his own sinful nature. It s OK now, from this touching of a burning coal from the throne-room of God, applied by a seraph. This is going to be a two-part message, I am afraid. All of this sixth chapter just sets UP Jonathan Edwards sense that a real believer in Jesus Christ will somehow get the beauty of holiness. I believe Isaiah 6. This Thursday I will be guest-lecturing in the Rabbi s class on campus on the Book of Exodus. The rabbi wants me to simply explain my take on Exodus from my own tradition. I will do so. I believe it. I think the things that are described there are real. I believe these awesome things in Isaiah 6 too. Isn t it amazing that I believe them? First, Edwards wrote back in 1746, that authentic believers in Christ will possess the Holy Spirit inside of him, the indwelling Spirit of God, the third person of the trinity. He will not be imagining that and He cannot have the Holy Spirit ripped from him nor can he ever disqualify himself of being indwelt by the Spirit. Second, he will somehow amazingly, start to desire the Lord and the things of the Lord just for the value of themselves, a deeper thing than the supreme pragmatism of well what do I get if I trust God? Third, he will begin to see the beauty of holiness. He won t have to be convinced, cajoled, shamed or bullied into it. He will SEE it himself. We don t mean to suggest that you or I need to somehow seek an Isaiah-throne-room experience But in a sense, the whole goal of life is to see the beauty of Who God is. When you start out in real faith in Christ, it is pretty much focused on the cross. And we never, ever lose sight of the cross. But as we grow in our walk with Christ we begin to see more and more of His beauty. And we become drawn to Him. More of this next week Let s sing (a capella) Holy, holy, holy Early in the morning, Holy, holy, holy God in three persons, Lord God Almighty Our song shall rise to Thee Merciful and mighty blessed Trinity 6