Isaiah 6

ISAIAH: “the Holy One of Israel” The Vision of the Holy: An awesome privilege Isaiah 6:1-13 June 12, 2005

One: Prologue

Introduction

Although our Scripture is Isaiah 6:1-13 we read only verses 8-10. These contain the heart and theological intention of the chapter in the context of the prophecy of Isaiah:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, “Here am I; send me!” And he said, “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.”

The religious scene in America today is most interesting. For an example, a flyer promoting two coming conferences came in my mail this week entitled “Just say NO to the Religious Right.” Among the many speakers are the evangelicals Jim Wallis and Tony Campollo, both of whom have been on PLNU’s campus. The theme of the conferences is, “America needs a Spiritual Left to Counter the Religious Right! The Left considers itself more right than the Religious Right, and the Right believes it is more spiritual that the Spiritual Left! Are we simply in one or the other? Do we have to choose? Are these the only alternatives? Our present culture seems to say so!

PLNU professor Sam Powell has a new book just off the press, A Theology of Spirituality (Abingdon). He graciously allowed me a copy of it in manuscript form before publication. His remarks in his opening chapter gives another description of what is going on in our religious culture:

we live in a post-Christian America. By this I mean not only that America today is religiously pluralistic but also that we can no longer take for granted any significant degree of knowledge about the Bible and the Christian faith on the part of the American public. There was a time when America was a culture saturated with knowledge of the Bible. It may have been casual knowledge and misunderstanding may have abounded, but even those who had no liking for Christianity nonetheless had some knowledge of biblical teachings. Revivalistic preaching and public moral exhortation, accordingly, could presuppose a widespread acquaintance with the elements of the Christian faith. Today the situation is quite different. Today not only can we not presuppose a significant degree of biblical knowledge among Americans but we cannot presuppose such a degree of knowledge in the church. Many of those in the church have not been schooled in the rudiments of the Christian faith as previous generations were. For this reason, the church has an important educational task, both for its members (catechesis) and for those outside the church (evangelism).

Twenty years ago I began to work on Isaiah 6, or better, Isaiah 6 began to work on me! The first presentation of my studies in this text was on November 7, 1985, at the Sacramento District Preacher’s Retreat. It later developed into one sermon used in two churches, then into two sermons. On February 24, 25, and 26, 1988, for their “Spiritual Deepening Week” at Nazarene Theological Seminary it was expanded into three presentations. And then for a Sunday night series at Spring Valley Church of the Nazarene in 1993 in some mysterious way it became four sermons! The title all the way along has been “The Vision of the Holy.” I did not touch it again until now.

So working from the 1988 version I am trying to mold these four studies into our present series on Isaiah. Some of the wording may reflect the fact that I was seventeen years younger and attempting with “youthful” enthusiasm to “lay it on” the future ministers of the Church. Yet hopefully we can discover anew any relevance of Isaiah’s Vision of the Holy may have for our day, for our church, and for our own journeys of faith. I ask for your help as we reflect together on the great text and its contemporary relevance.

I. Isaiah’s Commission

It is significant that Isaiah’s vision, reported somewhat in the form of a call narrative, does not occur at the beginning of the book as do the calls of Jeremiah (1:1-4) and Ezekiel (1:1—3:27), for they are designed to legitimize them as messengers of God—the normal function of the call narrative. Rather as we have already vividly seen Isaiah’s vision follows five chapters of oracles of divine judgment and prophecies of hope, closes the introduction to the Book of Isaiah, and serves as a transition to what follows.

So Isaiah 6 functions in its literary context s not so much as a call narrative legitimizing Isaiah as a prophet, but more as a vision report vividly reinforcing Isaiah’s message of judgment to Israel as God’s instructions to him in verse 9 suggest:

And he said, “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’”

Almost incomprehensible to our religious sensibilities, Isaiah’s commission was “not merely to proclaim judgment upon his people, but to bring it upon them by this very message.” His role of hardening rested on the prior divine decision to destroy the nation.

Seen from this perspective it is obvious that Isaiah’s “Vision of the Holy” in chapter 6 “is intended to authenticate the entire Vision” of Isaiah. Isaiah’s own role in this unusual chapter even for Scripture can be said to be “in some important sense, paradigmatic,” that is, he stands for Israel itself. In the context of Isaiah’s prophecies in a real though brief way this chapter answers then the question posed by the first five chapters, the question that “the rest of the book answers it in a more involved way. How can this Israel become that Israel?”

So Isaiah 6 is “clearly fundamental to the entire course of Isaiah’s ministry and to the shape of his book.” This revelation of the glory of God to Isaiah and his searing conviction of God as holy determined the character of his ministry and defines the prophetic book which bears his name. In Isaiah, God is supremely the “Holy One of Israel” (1:4).

The theme that we explore out of this challenging powerful Old Testament passage is

THE VISION OF THE HOLY

As we work our way through Isaiah 6 our sub-topics will be the Vision of the of the Holy as . . .

A Vision of the Transcendent One, vv. 1-4 A Vision of Sin and Grace, vv. 5-8 A Vision of Judgment and Hope, vv. 8-13

The hub around which the spokes of the wheel of this significant chapter turns is verse 8:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

II. Our Commission

The contemporary question for us out of this text is clear and simple: What is our calling as a Church, as a people set apart for ministry in the world? Two things appear obvious in this regard from Isaiah’s vision:

1.

First, and most significant, God call us to be a “holy” people and to a “holiness” ministry. These phrases are a cliché to us, I know, but they are overwhelmingly profound in the context of Isaiah. But what do they mean? As I observe us in the midst of the blatant paganism of much of our 21th century American culture, and as I see us as a participating part of a pop evangelical culture, the answer is far from obvious. I am not always sure I know who we are as I have watched us in action for the almost 50 years that have transpired since my ordination as an elder in the Church of the Nazarene. And that seems to be truer now than ever as I get faint glimpses of what is going on in our church culture. As generated by the ethos of our post-modern age, there may even be two Nazarene Churches, a spiritual left and a religious right—I can name individuals representative of each! But I won’t..

In the 80’s in some agony of soul I entered on a personal quest as to the essence of my own “holiness” heritage. I asked what does it mean

to minister in a holiness tradition? to be in some distinctive sense a “holiness” person, a member of a “holiness” church?

My most penetrating personal insights come from the Old Testament, starting particularly with Exodus 20:18-21 with the fascinating verse 21: “The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was” (NIV). In that scriptural context I found a perspective within which I am able, at least to my mind, to see more satisfactorily the fulfillment of the Holy in the person and ministry of Jesus. I was intrigued along the way as well by Hosea 11:1-9,

I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, And I will not come in wrath.

I find the Old Testament significantly relevant to the concerns of my New Testament faith. We would have a far less unbalanced Christian faith if we did more justice in our preaching and teaching to the Old Testament witness to the person and character of God! We need to be reminded that the declaration of Moses to the Israelites that “the LORD your God is a devouring [“consuming,” NASB] fire, a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24), characterizes as well the God of the New Testament Christian. As the writer to the Hebrews exhorts:

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we may offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire (12:28-29).

Isaiah 6 leads us in a very concrete way into the biblical essence of the Holy as it permeates the prophetic ministry of Isaiah and the great book that bears his name. So if our calling, by biblical and theological heritage, is to be a “holiness” people on the evangelical scene, if our calling is to a “holiness” ministry in an unholy world that has lost its moral foundations, perhaps Isaiah can help us with his vision at the heart of his great book..

2

Second, in verse 8 we are called to be a “servant” people of God in the world. But how is this to be? How can that happen to us?

Isaiah declares in his prophecy that “sinful, arrogant Israel is going to be the holy people of God to whom the nations will come to learn of God.” How can sinful Israel become servant Israel, for they were indeed a sinful people? Isaiah opens his prophecy wit a litany of judgment (1:2-15) declaring:

Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth: for the LORD has spoken:

I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.

The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand” (1:2-3).

And yet . . .

You are my witnesses, says the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen” (43:10a).

“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (49:6b).

How can sinful Israel indeed become servant Israel? The solution to this problem is found in chapter 6, for only when the personal vision of the prophet Isaiah becomes the experience of the people as a nation, will they be able to fulfill their servant calling as a holy people. This Scripture declares that only when a people has a true vision of the holy, only when they have seen themselves against the backdrop of the holiness and glory of God and are exposed to his judgment and to his grace, can they be a servant people to a broken and hungry world.

May I suggest that our need may be little different than theirs. When we have a true vision of the Holy as a people—as a church, and as individuals, when we can see ourselves vividly and unforgettably in the context of the holiness and the glory of the transcendent God himself and have become totally vulnerable to his judgment and to his grace, it is then and only then, that in our individual and corporate lives, we we be the servant presence of God to a morally conflicted society and to a spiritually confused people as we Americans seem to be today who see the cross of Jesus primarily in the light of the subtly pagan motifs of American culture. As Teresa of Avila suggests, “We are fonder of consolations than we are of the cross.”

Conclusion

Sam Powell, after describing the increasing general religiosity of the American people, writes interestingly,

For although religious belief is as or more pervasive than in the past, there has been a sizable shift of religious interest from Christianity to alternatives outside the church. Even if some of the membership losses in the mainline churches from the ‘60s to the present have resulted in increases in evangelical churches, the fact remains that the Christian churches no longer have a monopoly on American religious life as we suppose they once did. Of course, we know that in every era of American history, the church faced an uphill battle in its evangelistic task. But not until recently have Americans had so many alternatives to choose from. In the 18th century, the main options were few: Christianity, Judaism, and some form of Deism. The options expanded modestly in the 19th century with the rise of various forms of Spiritualism. But the last 30 or so years have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number and types of religion available to the American public. In this situation, although the majority of Americans continues to identify itself as Christian, the Christian churches are no longer the main providers of religion.

. . . In particular, the American religious scene today resembles a marketplace. Once upon a time each small town might have had a single general store that was an all-purpose, one-stop shopping venue. Today, multi-purpose department stores have had a difficult time sustaining themselves through the rise of more specialized stores that focus either on particular types of goods (such as clothing or sports equipment) or on demographic niches (such as teenagers). The shopping mall provides an apt metaphor for religion today. The idea of the mall is that no single store can satisfy all of one’s consumer needs. By analogy, Americans by and large have decided that no single church or religion can be expected to satisfy all of our spiritual needs. So, just as there has been a dramatic proliferation of shopping options, so . . . Americans come into the great religious mall and find there some large churches seeking to be full service spiritual venues but also many smaller, boutique religions that appeal only to a segment of the population, which seeks them out for very specific reasons. This means that for Americans, religion is a consumer-oriented commodity and they participate in religion more as consumers than as devotees. This is not to say that Americans think of religions as something to be bought and sold. It is to say that we tend to see religion as something that satisfies a need.

Relating to this “need”thing I read recently about a cartoon that “shows a tribe of cavemen standing by the edge of a high cliff. They have just thrown one of their number over the cliff and one of them, who appears to be the leader, is saying to the others, ‘So, is there anyone else who’s needs aren’t being met?’” I wonder if Isaiah would have liked this story. Sam continues,

But as our spiritual needs have become more refined and we have come to expect more out of life, there has been a tendency to engage in a “shopping around” attitude in one’s approach to religion. The evidence of this people’s tendency today not to remain in the tradition in which they were raised but instead to seek out a church or tradition that best suits them and shows greatest promise of meeting their needs. Church-hopping and tradition-shopping is not so much because people have changed their minds about doctrines but more often because a certain church has a program (for children or teens, for instance) that corresponds to a need arising at a certain point in one’s life.

So we will be examining the vision that according to Scripture is essential for a “holiness” people whose calling is to be a “servant” people, “THE VISION OF THE HOLY,” as we continue our study of Isaiah 6.

ISAIAH: “the Holy One of Israel” The Vision of the Holy: An awesome privilege Isaiah 6:1-13 June 26, 2005

Two: A Vision of the Transcendent One (6:1-4)

Introduction

Not long ago I sat in a bar on 5th street in downtown San Diego with two lovely ladies. On the wall as we entered was a plague reading, “What kind of society is it that says ‘God is dead’ and ‘Elvis is alive?’”

As we have seen, the setting of Isaiah’s Vision was the condition of the society of his day—“the careless optimism of a prosperous and proud people, who entered upon their religious services without awe.” Out of, within, and to this situation came Isaiah’s totally related vision. In our study we are searching for the relevance of that vision for our lives in the culture of our day. Glancing at the bookshelves in my garage last week I saw an intriguing title. It was A Return to Christian Culture: Christian Ideals in a Sagging Society (1973) by Richard S. Taylor. The book is dated, thirty-two years old, but some of his comments are not. As I was writing this paragraph I was struck by the likeness of some of his statements with that days’ Union-Tribune (6/20/2005) headlines!

Dr. Taylor writes, “It is time we awakened to the appalling barbarism which engulfs us” (29-30). In the “Currents“ section of the Union-Tribune the headline “Sisters in a sick world” lead into a report about new TV shows with “tough chicks,” so “Tune in for gutsy women, and what you get is guts and gore. You will also get controlling, paternalistic bosses; caseloads heavy with sex crimes and mutilated female bodies; and predatory suspects who prey on the show’s heroines.”

Again Taylor writes, “The culture crisis is but the outward manifestation of the moral decadence. . . . The underlying secularism breaks out in ethical relativism, irresponsible individualism, and social rootlessness. There is a shocking loss of personal integrity” (30-31). In the Business” section the headline “High-tech tools give extra edge to cheaters” details how camera phones, laser pointers, and other electronic devices are used to aid students on exams.

And finally, talking about the state of the arts, Richard Taylor notes that ”city after city is finding it increasingly difficult to finance a symphony orchestra (in contrast to the huge sports complexes being built).” In the “San Diego” section the headline is “Chargers plan to ask voters about stadium”! A few months ago there was an article or two in the “Arts” section of a Sunday Union-Tribune comparing on the one hand the contribution financially and otherwise of the fine arts community to the city with that of professional sports, and on the other hand contrasting the support financial and otherwise of the city “fathers” of each. The city of Cincinnati, for example, in recent years has built two new riverfront stadiums for their mediocre teams. I wonder, to what extent, does American professional sports fulfil the same function in our society that the Roman Coliseum did in ancient Rome?—And I am a sports fan!

Last lesson we introduced our study of Isaiah’s Vision of the Holy indicating its three phases:

A Vision of the Transcendent One (6:1-4) A Vision of Sin and Grace (6:5-8) A Vision of Judgement and Hope (6:9-13)

We note with John Oswalt that determining whether Isaiah’s vision was actual, ecstatic, or mystical, has no bearing on its reality for Isaiah’s ministry. What matters is that he saw the LORD in such a way as to change the shape of the rest of his life. No doubt Isaiah had a real vision, “I saw!” he writes. Physically he was at the entrance of the Jerusalem temple, but his vision extended to the heavenly realm, to the throne room of God, where God was surrounded by his heavenly council—the two settings are one!. Simplistically in my mind Isaiah was in church, where we ought to be when we worship--present in the earthly house of God, yet at the same time in the heavenly presence of a holy God!

Isaiah experienced God that day first as

I. A Holy Mystery! (vv. 1-2)

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.

1. Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty” For an Israelite like Isaiah it was a monstrous conception. Although “he saw,” it was not God himself that the passage pictures, but only “the hem of his robe” and the Serpahs. Isaiah knew of God’s admonition to Moses in Exodus 33 when Moses in his desperate and daring intercession for golden calf Israel had asked God, “show me your glory, I pray”! (33:18), and God responded, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (33:20). When sensitive Jewish and Christian readers visualize this awesome sight, with Isaiah they feel the raw edge of terror at being where humanity dare not go.” R. C. Sproul, a contemporary Reform theologian, author, and popular conference speaker, opens his treatment in of The Holiness of God with the report of a midnight college experience: “I was alone with God. A holy God. An awesome God. A God who could fill me with terror in one second and with peace the next.

“I saw the Lord”: Isaiah’s visionary experience was first of all of “the Lord,” `”Lord” in Hebrew is Adonai, not the untranslatable sacred name, the tetragrammaton, that we render “LORD” or “Yahweh.” The title “Lord” refers to God as the Sovereign One, “the absolute overlord of the earth with whom all people have to do.” Isaiah’s vision was a vision of absolute sovereignty! Significantly, as we have seen, Isaiah does not describe God himself. God is exalted so high that he sees only the hem of his royal robe filling the temple in the presence of the seraphim who were hiding their faces and their feet with their wings.

As Oswalt comments,

It is as though words break down when one attempts to depict God himself. . . . Did the robe fill the temple? No, God did! The import is clear. There is a barrier beyond which the simply curious cannot penetrate. The experience is too personal, too awesome, too all-encompassing for mere reportage. Each one of us must aspire to our own experience of his presence.”

2

For Isaiah, it was also an overwhelming sight, intensified in verse 2 with the sight of the flying fiery seraphim. Fiery was probably the chief meaning of the term for seraphim (Numbers 21:6). Therefore the presence of the seraphim speaks to us of the fiery presence of God’s holiness. Stressed is God’s separation and difference as holy from the merely human realm—the “Wholly Other” in the phrase coined by Rudolf Otto. For the prophet Isaiah that day, although intensely aware in that sacred moment of Yahweh’s presence in what he has seen, the Holy remains God’s “hidden and innermost being.” So first and most of all “the Holy One is the wholly other, whom man cannot reach by himself, who remains far away and terrible, unless each man turns to Him in His free grace, [a grace that] cannot be forced and cannot be merited.” A holy mystery indeed!

To worship is to discover oneself in some real sense in the presence of a holy mystery. Like Moses before the burning bush, it is to stand on holy ground (Exodus 3:5), like the disciples on the Emmaus Road, it is to have our hearts burning within us because of the presence of the Risen Christ (Luke 24:32). In a class one day years ago (30?) at Claremont Graduate School, I was startled to hear the little German Bultmannian scholar, Hans Dieter Betz, declare that there is no worship without ecstasy!

Dare we ask, can there be a “holiness” church and a “holiness” ministry without “the experience of the Holy” as the essence of our worship? Why is it often difficult for our “people to find worship a thrilling and moving experience” and therefore leave our fellowship for either more liturgical or charismatic styles of worship. The liturgy with its focus on the cross and resurrection can touch the Holy, and the charismatic with its often induced (not always) ecstasy can suggest the experience of the Holy. Have we left the heart and essence of our own heritage for a domesticated Go neatly tucked into our rationalistic categories?

But we cannot be a “holiness” people or a “holiness” church without the presence of the Holy. And an enthusiastic affirmations that “God is here!” mixed with evangelical moralisms does not make for the experience of the Holy in worship. The impact of Isaiah’s vision for our corporate and individual worship times is the absolute necessity of an authentic sense of the Transcendent One among us?

Back to Isaiah’s Vision of the Transcendent One. It is significant that Isaiah’s vision took place “in the year that King Uzziah died” It was a time of crisis in the mind of the prophet. Uzziah’s reign had been a long and good reign of 52 years, politically stable, accomplished in part by paying tribute to a militant Assyrian power, but the kind of king in whom one could focus one’s trust and one’s hopes. He had been a better king than most, “for he was marvelously helped until he became strong” (2 Chronicles 26:15).

So now what will happen

when such a king dies, and coupled with that death there comes the recognition that a resurgent Assyria is pushing nearer and nearer? In moments like that it is easy to see the futility of any hope but an ultimate one. No earthly king could help Judah in that hour.” 
It was in such a day of crisis that Isaiah’s vision brought to him

II. A Holy Perspective! (vv. 3-4)

And one called to another and said, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.

The crucial personal times in our lives demand a holy perspective, and we do live in a crucial time for our holiness heritage—in our church--more true now than when I first wrote these lines (1988 or before). Times are crucial as well in our beloved land and in the neighborhood of our world.

It is reported that Martin Luther King, at a crucial moment I

Buried his face in his hands at the kitchen table. He admitted to himself that he was afraid, that he had nothing left, that the people would falter if they looked to him for strength. Then he said as much out lout. He spoke the name of no deity, but his doubts spilled out as a prayer, ending, “I’ve come to a point where I can’t fact it alone.” As he spoke these words, the fear suddenly began to melt away. He became intensely aware of what he called an “inner voice” telling him to do what he thought was right. Such simplicity worked miracles, bringing a shudder of relief and the courage to face anything. It was for King the first transcendent religious experience of his life. . . . For King the moment awakened and confirmed his belief that the essence of religion was not a grand metaphysical idea but something personal, grounded in experience—something that opened up mysteriously beyond the predicaments of human beings in their frailest and noblest moments (Parting the Waters, 1988).

We need a holy perspective when the roof caves in and the walls tumble out, or as Tony Hendra expresses it in Father Joe when he is hit by his first case of severe adolescent doubt, “That very same night, a late spring night, warm and balmy, a few weeks before my sixteenth birthday, the bottom fell out of my universe.”

1.

Isaiah heard the seraphim call out,

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Here we reach the crux of Isaiah’s vision. The threefold repetition, “Holy, holy, holy,” is “the strongest form of the superlative in Hebrew.” Sproul spins the superlative out for us:

To mention something three times in succession is to attach to it emphasis of super importance. For example the dreadful judgment of God is declared in the Book of Revelation by the eagle in mid-air who cried with a loud voice: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth. . . .” Or we hear it in the mocking sarcasm of Jeremiah’s temple speech when he chided the people for their hypocrisy, by which thy call out, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that he is merely holy, or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy.

Adam Smith, over a hundred years ago, suggested that “the word holy appeals in turn to each of the three great faculties of man’s nature, . . . his conscience, his affections, his reason; it covers the impressions which God makes on man as a sinner, on man as a worshipper, on man as a thinker.”

As the seraphim praise the holiness and glory of God, the divine designation moves from ‘Adonai to Yahweh Sabaoth (“the LORD of hosts”) , the covenant name of Israel’s God and commander-in-chief of his heavenly armies. It is now the personal name, Israel’s own name for their God.

It is significant that the vision also proceeds from eye to ear, from sight to hearing, for “the content of this experience is not merely numinous, emotive, and nonrational. . . . revelation does not come merely through raw experience, but also through divinely given cognitive interpretation of that experience (see also v. 7).” “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4) is basic to the faith of the Old Testament, and “Let anyone with ears to hear listen” (Mark 4:9) is at the heart of the New Testament faith: “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17, NASB).

[Inserted later from Petersson: “Men cannot taste or touch or see divinity as well as they can hear it. In the process of refining, subliming, and elevating, different kinds of sensations are involved, and all of them combine and interfuse in a struggle for transcendence. In a strictly Christian sense Crashaw is probably the most mystical of English poets, and in part because his verses aspire to the abstraction, energy, and harmony of music. ‘Your ports are all superfluous here,/ Save that which lets in faith, the ear,’ he says” (119). Poetic lines used later.]

What was the “Holy, holy, holy” that Isaiah heard? What did the Holy say to him? Against the backdrop of the concept in the ancient world, Oswalt summarizes that

For Isaiah the announcement of God’s holiness meant that he was in the presence of One distinct from—other than—himself. But for Isaiah as a Hebrew, it also meant that the terrifying otherness was not merely in essence but in character. Here was one ethically pure, absolutely upright, utterly true.

As always before a holy God we are faced with the mystery of revelation that “at the same time both unveils and increases the mystery of God. For God ‘can be glorified aright only when he is known as the Holy One, when he, the mysterious One, proclaims his mystery.’” The saints through the centuries testify that the closer one gets to God the further away he seems. It is difficult to glorify a domesticated God—our hearts really do hunger for a holy God!

2.

And according to the song of the seraphim the Holy One proclaims his glory in the earth:

“the whole earth is full of His glory.”

As scholars variously express the connection, “God’s ‘holiness is his hidden, concealed glory. . . But his glory is his holiness revealed.’” “His glory is his disclosed holiness; his holiness is his inner glory.” “’holy’ denotes God’s innermost nature. . . . his ‘glory describes the appearance of his being. God is known through his work.” Yet in many ways we are “blind to the glory of God to which all reality bears witness, until [we are] convinced of his holiness,” for “only someone who knows his holiness recognizes his glory.” Does this mean that apart from a personal vision of the Holy, we cannot recognize the presence of God in the world about us, nature is only science, human society is only secular, institutions are only power politics, history is without meaning or purpose, and Providence is only Fate? “Vanity of vanities, . . . All is vanity!” (Ecc.1:2). How right on was the language of the 16th century John of the Cross when he says that

here lies the remarkable delight of this awakening: the soul knows creatures through God and not God through creatures. . . . where God is unknown nothing is known.

Scripture affirms that Isaiah, in that supreme moment, senses in everything all around him the reality of a holy God, a revelation of the glory of the Transcendent One. Penetrating Isaiah’s view of all human and earthly reality was a vivid awareness of the Holy.

3.

The vision continues: “The pivots on the thresholds shook” (v. 4): “The heavenly song of praise is too much for this earth: it makes the temple shake on its foundations, so that the doors, with their pivots set in corner-stones, shake (cf. 1 Kings 6.31, 33f.; also Amos 9:1).” Just like a California earthquake! “I am glad I am a Christian!” was the exclamation of a lady setting by me in the Bethel Baptist Church in East San Diego, a black congregation, on the Sunday morning of one of our more severe earthquakes several years ago. Luke reports an early Christ experience of the reality of the Holy in Acts 4:321 when he tells us that when the apostles

had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.

We notice one more detail: the temple was filling with smoke—probably “holy smoke”! Alan Krieder in his stimulating study, Journey Towards Holiness, written out of the Anabaptist tradition, gives the smoke a meaningful context when he summarizes holiness as

A living force, unseen but very real. This force is a mysterious power, an awesome reality which fits into no normal human categories. To describe it, people have compared it to physical substances—light, fire, smoke, power. They have described its quality—powerful, pure, radiant, sublime. They have reported their own emotional responses to it—fear, joy, awkwardness, awareness of guilt, fascination, reverence. But the reality of holiness has always transcended language. It is “a mystery inexpressible and above all creatures . . .that which is beyond conception or understanding, extraordinary and unfamiliar.”

It was a time in the life of Isaiah when his sight and his insight were lifted above the affairs of daily life to the presence of the Transcendent One! The whole of his own life and all the affairs his nation were seen in a new perspective, the perspective of the awe-filled reality of a holy God! Like Isaiah of old we need the perspective of a holy, transcendent God. Perhaps we cannot have an experience as vivid as Isaiah’s, but we can by faith have one just as real in essence--after all WHY do we bother to come to church if we are not seeking an illuminating sense of the Holy? I believe it can happen as our pastors lead the congregation honestly, forthrightly, and humbly, through the Word to the foot of the Cross where the Holy has touched our world most profoundly—“the lifted up Son of Man!”

The inner reality of the experience of the Holy should happen to us weekly, and I fully believe that it can happen to us daily in some real sense through an effective devotional discipline, one designed to be a daily renewal of the Vision of the Holy for our lives, when we you and I remember afresh that

I the chief of sinners am, But Jesus died for me.

This can be so even if our devotional times seem “useless” like those Henri Nouwen describes in Gracias! where he writes in Bolivia of his daily hour in the Carmelite chapel:

Still the Lord speaks to me, looks at me, and embraces me there, where I am still unable to notice it. . . . Yes, I notice . . . that my days and weeks are different days and weeks when they are held together by these regular ‘useless’ times. God is greater than my senses, greater than my thoughts, greater than my heart. I do believe that he touches me in places that are unknown even to myself. . . . I realize that something is happening that is so deep that it becomes like the riverbed through which the waters can safely flow and find their way to the open sea.

As we get in touch with the Holy, without which there can be no holiness life or witness, we are lifted above the weight of life, and can see through it the heavenly perspective of the King of all life! That is what I need to happen to me when I hear my pastor preach!—we see all in our individual worlds in the perspective of the reality of the Transcendent One!

Conclusion

Thomas Merton pens a relevant word concerning the Holy God:

It is dangerous to talk glibly about the infinite God. It is sometimes dangerous to talk about Him at all, unless talking of Him brings you deeper into His mystery, and finally flattens you into silence in the face of his transcendence!

This is hardly the domesticated God of a rationalist faith, rather a holy Presence! A holy Mystery! A holy Perspective—the Vision of the Transcendent One!

An inspiring story first told by Anthony Bloom in Beginning to Pray, then cited by Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, who writes,

Anthony Bloom tells the story of an elderly woman who had been working at prayer with all her might but without ever sensing God’s presence. Wisely the archbishop encouraged the old woman to go to her room each day and “for fifteen minutes knit before the face of God, but I forbid you to say one word of prayer. You just knit and enjoy the peace of your room.” The woman received this counsel, and at first her only thought was, “Oh how nice. I have been fifteen minutes during which I can do nothing without being guilty!” In time, however, she began to enter the silence created by her knitting. Soon, she said, “I perceived that this silence was not simply an absence of noise, but that the silence had substance. It was not absence of something but presence of something.” As she continued her daily knitting, she discovered that “at the heart of the silence there was He who is all stillness, all peace, all poise. She had let go of her tightfisted efforts to enter God’s presence and, by doing so, discovered God’s presence already there.

We close by sharing an old song that I had not heard since college days (1946-50) in Indiana. It was the closing hymn of the radio broadcast of the Cadle tabernacle in Indianapolis, Indiana. But a week ago I heard it used by Dr. Keith Pagan to close the morning worship at the Village Church (Presbyterian) in Rancho Santa Fe, California:

Did You Think to Pray? Mrs. M. A. Kidder W. O. Perkins

Ere you left your room this morning, Did you think to pray? In the name of Christ our Savior, Did you sue for loving favor, As a shield today?

Oh, how praying rests the weary! Prayer will change the night to day; So in sorrow and in gladness, Don’t forget to pray.

When you met with great temptation, Did you think to pray? By His dying love and merit, Did you claim the Holy Spirit As your guide and stay?

When your hear was filled with anger, Did you think to pray? Did you plead for grace, my brother, That you might forgive an-other Who had crossed your way?

When sore trials came upon you, Did you think to pray? When your soul was bowed in sorrow, Balm of Gilead did you borrow, At the gates of day.

Oh, how praying rests the weary! Prayer will change the night to day; So in sorrow and in gladness, Don’t forget to pray. ISAIAH: “the Holy One of Israel” The Vision of the Holy: An awesome privilege Isaiah 6:1-13 July 31—August 7, 2005

Three: A Vision of Sin and Grace (6:5-8)

Introduction

The report of Isaiah’s Vision of the Holy in the temple depicts a moment when eternity swallowed up time, when earth became the vehicle of heaven. The following poetic lines, written in the first half of the 17th century, attempt to portray what happens when the Holy takes over the earthly reality of a 16th century Christian woman:

All thy old woes shall now smile on thee, And thy pains sit bright upon thee, All thy sorrows here shall shine, And thy sufferings be divine. Tears shall take comfort and turn gems, And wrongs repent to diadems. Ev’n thy deaths shall live, and new Dress the soul that erst they slew.

A holy, heavenly perspective! These are lines from the British poet Richard Crashaw (1613?-1649), who from his reading of Teresa of Avila’s Vida (Life, [1515-1582]), sought to depict the Spanish mystic’s spiritual quest from childhood to spiritual marriage.

But back to the 8th century Isaiah and how his Vision of the Holy, immersed in the society of his day, relates to us as 21st century American Christians. Again the question, “What is our society like?”

I found a faint clue this week in an incident that took place in Tucson, Arizona. In Tucson a group of grandmothers call themselves the “Raging Grannies” hoping to go to Iraq so their children and grandchildren can come home. One of them, Betty Schroeder, 74, on facing tresspassing charges after trying to enlist at a military-recruitment center in Tucson, said, “They should’ve said, ‘You’re too old,’ but they just called the police!”

More to the point of our text, two quotations are more penetrating as we relate Isaiah’s Vision of the Holy to contemporary American culture: The first is dated May, 17, 2005, and comes from a book review: “it seems that we have given up on becoming like God and have settled for making God like ourselves”

The second quotation dates from around 1900. Percy C. Ainsworth, who died in 1909 of typhoid fever at the age of thirty-six, was a graduate of Didsbury College in Manchester England, the location of our present British Nazarene Theological College. In one of his sermons while he was pastor of Wesley Chapel in Birmingham, he wrote the following:

Perhaps the church is too much at home in the world. We talk much about meeting people on their own ground, about understanding the spirit of our age, about keeping abreast of the times. Within certain very narrow limits there is truth in these phrases; but there is not in all of them put together, and in all kindred pleas and policies, one atom of the truth that saves the world. There are some who would have the church sit at the feet of the successful businessperson. They rise in our councils, these baptized wordlings, and talk as if the things we really need could be picked up in the head office of a smart and hustling firm. They say we do not speak the language of the people and are not sufficiently in touch with all the swift, subtle changes in the world's shifting and complex life. And such criticism is wrong, as all shallow things are wrong. It is not this world we need to know better, it is the other world. It is not the language of the street we need to master, it is the language of the kingdom where He reigns whose voice has the music and throb of many waters (Ezek. 43:2). We need to move with surer step and keener vision and warmer response amid eternal things. . . . . Christians ought to have this higher loyalty, this spiritual patriotism, this otherworldliness that does not wholly reveal itself in the practice of life's common virtues, much less in any eccentricities of habit, but in the subtle texture of character, in the aroma of influence, in the wistfulness of the soul's outlook.

I can’t help but wonder, What would Percy Ainsworth have written as a 21st century evangelical pastor?

In our examination of Isaiah 6 we have declared that the Vision of the Holy, as a vivid sense of the Transcendent One, must characterize an authentic “holiness” people. We have seen that the Vision of the Transcendent One (vv.1-4) was an encounter with a Holy Mystery (6:1-2), a mystery that graces to us a Holy Perspective (6:3-4) on life. As we move on, we remember too that what we see in Isaiah 6 refers not merely to the prophet as a individual man, but relates even more to the society of Israel, to the character of a nation, to the people as a whole.

Since we left off in our conclusion last time with a piercing quote from Thomas Merton, now as we explore further the impact of Isaiah’s vision on us as a people, we begin with another word from him. Merton insists that the most important consequence of God’s transcendence is “the necessity of faith.” He explains,

the knowledge of all else than God makes us the masters of what we know. But knowledge of God makes Him the Master of the soul that knows Him. If it does not, then the soul has not really known Him. Only in the submission which is faith can we ‘know’ God and find, in that knowledge, true peace.”

So we take “the necessity of faith”: as the programmatic statement for our return to the “beyond” of Isaiah’s vision,

In verses 5-8 we see that “THE VISION OF THE HOLY” becomes “A Vision of Sin and Grace." Isaiah’s vision has penetrated to the very core of his moral and spiritual life and to that of the life of the nation. I am intrigued by how Phineas Bresee, emphasizing the individual, speaks in his Sermons on Isaiah of the effect on the prophet:

This revelation to Isaiah was so sudden, vast, and deep, and so far-reaching that it overwhelmed him. It is difficult for us to appreciate his situation, for these things have come to us gradually. We spell out these great truths syllable by syllable, and we can hardly conceive the bursting of this full-orbed sun upon his twilight, like a glowing, shining, burning revelation by the personal appearance of the divine Christ.”

. As we move through the text we note first

I. The condition of Isaiah! (6:5)

“Woe is me!” I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

1.

The effect of the Vision of the Holy on the prophet is “Woe is me,” a strong word of prophetic denunciation, the announcing of doom, used by Jesus to pronounce judgment on the heads of the Pharisees. This means that when Isaiah

saw the Lord, he pronounced the judgment of God upon himself. ‘Woe to me!’ he cried calling down the curse of God, the utter anathema of judgment and doom upon his own head.

As a prophet in Israel Isaiah was bearing witness to the fact that his very existence was threatened. As Childs comments, Isaiah is “awestruck, not because he is only a mortal before the infinite, but because he is a sinful human being, sharing the impurity of an entire nation. In the presence of the Holy One he perceives his true state.”

In the Hebrew text Isaiah’s “Woe is me!” is defined by three ki or “because” clauses, parallel to one another and consequential on each other—“Woe is me!”

Why? Because, “I am lost” Why? Because, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (This is clearly a reason clause.) Why? Because, “my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

“Woe is me!” Why?

“Because,” says Isaiah, as others translate, “I am ruined, cut off, destroyed, struck dumb, silent, or undone” (King James). Isaiah is suddenly and almost brutally aware of himself and his people. The confrontation has brought him to despair. As a man of integrity, respected by his contemporaries, writes Sproul, Isaiah

caught one sudden glimpse of a Holy God. In that single moment all of his self-esteem was shattered. In a brief second he was exposed, made naked beneath the gaze of the absolute standard of holiness. . . . The instant he measured himself by the ultimate standard, he was destroyed—morally and spiritually annihilated. He was undone. He came apart. His sense of integrity collapsed.

Such an experience does not fit the spirit of our self-esteem age!

In Exodus 33:20 God had declared to Moses, “you cannot see my face, no one shall see me and live.” Isaiah “and all his contemporaries were certain that no man can survive the vision of God.” And there is a real sense in which none of us can! Strange indeed to our ears who have grown accustomed to a sentimentally all-loving God fitting our cultural scene—a God who forgives us any old time for any old thing! There is a modern perverted version of Martin Luther’s famous dictum, ”simul justus et peccator—at the same time justified but still a sinner.”

2.

At the heart of Isaiah’s confession is the emphatic “I,” as indicated by the order of the Hebrew and the use of the personal pronoun `anoki—“a man unclean of lips am I, and among a people unclean of lips I am living!” This “explicit juxtaposition of the prophet’s own sinfulness with that of his people indicates that the focus was not just on the individual; rather Israel shares the self-same sickness as all of his people, both lost and corrupt.” Isaiah not only took full responsibility for his condition, he also fully shared in the people’s responsibility. And it is “not the recognition of his finitude which crushes Isaiah; it is his uncleanness.” The element of the holiness of the God of Israel that is distressing to Isaiah is not so much God’s message as it is his character that engulfed him like a cloud of smoke! And where there is smoke, there is fire!

“A people of unclean lips!” Our previous study of chapters 1-5 indicates that societal justice was the issue” in Isaiah’s prophecy: “learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed” and “the LORD of hosts is exalted by justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy by righteousness” (1:17; 5:16; cf. Micah 6:8). The interpretation of “unclean lips” is primarily injustice in national society! In view was not just Israel’s worship of other lovers, other gods, with its immoral practices, for in Isaiah idolatry and the lack of social justice are two sides of one coin:

How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her— but now murderers! (5:21)

Idolatry is part and parcel the refusal to entrust oneself to a just and loving God, a holy God in other words. By Isaiah’s standards, how “clean” are we as a people? Just read the morning paper day after day, week in and week out, at all levels of our society, our churches, our schools, our governments—local, state, and national, the corporate world. And of course there is the personal and family violence and small time criminal activity that dots the daily San Diego sections of our paper! Greed and violence pervade our society. Injustice and oppression are inescapable as we read about and listen to local and national news. Thankfully we do try to do something about some of it. Yet, like any other unjust nation in history and around the world, we live under the judgment of God--and dependent on his providential mercy! We are not the unsullied “Christian” City on a Hill, nor have we ever been..

“I . . . a people,” Sin—experienced as both personal and corporate, both intensive and extensive! This denial of responsibility for the lack of justice is twofold. We face two dangers before the Vision of the Holy, the danger of saying not “I,” and the danger of saying not the “people”! In the flash of the moment Isaiah had a new understanding of sin. He saw that it was pervasive, in himself and everybody else. He understood that when our sinfulness is defined in relation to the holy in nature and need, it is so radical that our only hope is pure grace as we shall see!

“Unclean lips”—signifies that one is “cut off from any contact with the holy.” Isaiah was suddenly aware of how far he really was from God! Like the saints through the centuries, the closer they came to God, often the further they felt they were from God. Their use of the darkness metaphor was a testimony to this. Most often as evidences of so-called spiritual “success” grace our lives, the more aware we become of our spiritual failures!

“Lips” represents the whole person. Why else do lovers “kiss”?--and faithful Catholics kiss the foot of Peter in St. Peter’s in Rome? Here “lips” are symbolic of the “uncleanness of the whole person, whose condition and disposition they express.” ”For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart” (Matthew 12:34 NASB; cf. 12:33-37): If our mouth is dirty, Jesus says, we are dirty! Perhaps here is a clue to our lack of anointing—defined as the ability of others to sense God’s presence in our lives! Is there too much cynicism, do we tell too many off-color jokes, talk too much about others unmotivated by love for them and their welfare--too much unnecessary gossip! Ever wake up in the morning, reflecting on your words of yesterday, and feel dirty? And what do we do with the words of Jesus?

“I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account of every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you swill be condemned” (Matthew 12:36-37, bold mine).

These words call for an identity with Isaiah’s cry of moral and spiritual anguish,

“Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts“ (NASB).

Isaiah, for the first time in his life, really understood who God was. At the same instant, he really understood who Isaiah was. His need in that day is ours in this day!

What can we holiness church folk do about the lack in our culture of a sense of a moral universe, about the absence of the sense of the Holy as an ethical sanction? Do we just complain about the symptoms? Are we doing honor to the majesty and holiness of God in our services, and in our own lives—until there is a consciousness of the Transcendent One? Until for our worshippers the moral is mandated by the Holy? Or are we preaching a God more designed to meet man’s needs, “a God like ourselves”--a God more of psychological adjustment than an ethical God who has his holy demands on us? To what extent even in our holiness churches is personal and business morality a relative matter in the lives of our people. Is there little awareness of a holy God and consequently little conviction of sin? Is there a vivid sense of ultimate right and wrong, or does all behavior become merely pragmatic and expedient?

Biblically the Vision of the Holy meets us as a vision of radical sinfulness, the “root” problem! We become aware that we have no place to stand before God. Like the Psalmist

If thou, LORD, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, That thou mayest be feared (Psalm 130:3f., KJ)

With Isaiah we are reduced to utter silence! We are convinced that

God is inescapable. There is no place we can hide from Him. Not only does He penetrate every aspect of our lives, but He penetrates it in his majestic holiness. Therefore . . . there can be no worship, no spiritual growth, no true obedience without [the Holy]. ISAIAH: “the Holy One of Israel” The Vision of the Holy: An awesome privilege Isaiah 6:1-13 July 31—August 7, 2005

Three: A Vision of Sin and Grace: Continued (6:5-8)

Introduction

Our major concern in our study of Isaiah so far is the relevance of his proclamation of the holiness of God to who and what we are as a people in our time and place. We plug once again into our contemporary culture. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, professor of English at Westmont College, delivered a lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary entitled “Why Worry About Words?” She comments,

The generation of students I teach expects to be lied to. They know about “spin” and about the profiteering agendas of corporate advertising. . . . They also know, because it is all that they have seen in their twenty-odd years of life, that political discourse consists of a good deal of ad hominem argument, accusation, smear campaigns, hyperbole, broken promises, and lies or distortions. They are witnessing along with us the daily stream of euphemistic hedging, overgeneralized, obfuscating discourse that passes for political debate. . . . My undergraduates are learning to be critical of rhetorical sloppiness, but the currency of public discourse, debased as it is, is what is available to them, so that their own language resources are diminished and uncertain. They need our help.

Hardly Isaianic holiness! Most interesting is when she accounts for “the varieties of dumbing down and obscurantism” of our language she suggests that “a core explanation is fear. . . . It is fear of self-confrontation and fear of encounter with the Divine.”

Closer to home is the following paragraph entitled “SELF-CENTERED WORSHIP”:

In the past 30 years worship in American churches as shifted from an emphasis on an encounter with the divine to didactics, says worship consultant Sally Morganthaler (Theology News & Notes, Spring). The preferred form of worship in many congregations consists of a welcome, 20 minutes of singing contemporary music, then a special music performance and a sermon. (. . .) What ever else happens in contemporary worship is secondary to “disseminating information people need in order to gain control over their lives” and to ensure that they achieve “individual happiness. (Never mind that control is an illusion and happiness is transitory. See Ecclesiastes.).”

“From an emphasis on an encounter with the divine to didactics!” Dare we ask, “to what extent is the Holy being eclipsed in the worship life of the church?”

We began our study of “A Vision of Sin and Grace” by examining “The Condition of Isaiah” in verse 5. Out of the crucible of his prophetic Vision of the Holy” Isaiah cried out,

“Woe is me!” Why? Because, “I am lost” Why? Because, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” Why? Because, “my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

With Isaiah we too are at times reduced to utter silence in the presence of the Holy! With Sproul we remember that “God is inescapable. There is no place we can hide from Him. Not only does He penetrate every aspect of our lives, but He penetrates it in his majestic holiness. Today we consider

B. The Cure of God (vv. 6-7)

Then one of the seraphs flew to me holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”

We have already made much of the fact that in Isaiah the holy God is a God who demands justice among his people! But just as clearly and truly the holy God is a God who offers grace to that same people!

1.

First it is revealed here that sin is so serious that it needs the intervention of a holy God. But is sin really such a serious matter? The Old Testament declares that our “God is a devouring fire, a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24) and the New Testament adds a hearty Amen, “for indeed our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29).

The imagery of the temple continues, and once again the earthly temple is absorbed in the heavenly. We are placed not in the courtyard where the altar of whole burnt offering is located, but in the main chamber of the temple containing the altar of incense, placed even closer to the Holy of Holies. There Isaiah saw “one of the seraphs” flying to him “holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.” This altar, standing midway between the altar where bloody sacrifices were made for the sins of the people and the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies where the blood for atonement was sprinkled, speaks to me of the Cross of Christ. The “burning coal . . . from off the altar” (NASB) is for us the Cross applied to our hearts out of the fiery heart of the Holy.

”The seraph,” Isaiah says, “touched my mouth with it.” Only the “lips” of Isaiah were touched, not those of the people, for the message of Isaiah to the nation was to be that of judgment. Yet there will be a further prophetic message in the person of the prophet himself! “Lips,” one of the more sensitive and intimate parts of human flesh, meant that “for Isaiah this was a severe mercy, a painful act of cleansing. Isaiah’s wound was being cauterized. . . . He was being refined by holy fire.” The man “of unclean lips” is “touched” at the point of his uncleaness, his “lips”! The action of grace is penetrating and transforming. Fire is an age-long symbol of transformation in all cultures. It is significant that Isaiah, a prophet with a message to speak, was touched on the “mouth,” for “lips” are the vehicle of the word. We move our lips to speak.

The seraph’s healing word from the arena of the Holy to Isaiah was, “Now this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Another translation reads “your iniquity is removed and your sin is covered” (NASB). The chiastic construction in Hebrew (“removed . . . iniquity . . . sin . . . covered”) contains a defining parallelism indicating a comprehensive work of forgiveness, cleansing and sanctification—a permeating all encompassing work of grace in the heart and life! No “cheap grace” or easy forensic utterance here! Gone are all the barriers in Isaiah’s life to the presence of God in his life and to a life of obedience among the people. Phineas Bresee writes:

Isaiah stood face to face with Divine love and power. He pressed his needy spirit up to God. And that thing occurred which always will occur when human need and Divine love meet and mingle in the revelation of Jesus Christ. The fire touched him.”

Bresee’s fiery rhetoric continues,

O the mystery, the power, and the glory of that touch of fire. How it kissed Isaiah’s soul into new and nearer relation to God! How it whitened the dark lines out of his being! How it burned in its purifying power through his spirit! How it cleared the clouds of smoke away! How it prepared him to stand for God witnessing to His great salvation! Isaiah trod the way just before us. He entered into the Holy of Holies just ahead of us, but we too are come unto Him who baptizes with fire.

2.

Sin is so subtle, so permeating, that it takes a piercing vision of the Holy for us to see, and to continue seeing—all that is unlike Christ in our day-to-day living. Hopelessly inadequate are our pet moralisms, our rules or little legalisms by which we so easily justify ourselves. Those behaviors that were so “right” for us yesterday, we see so differently today in the light of new glimpses of the Holy. As Kreider puts it

the experience of God as Living Force—as light, power, joy-giver—is literally life-giving. This puts other things in perspective. How pure and loving God is! When, we like Isaiah, have seen the Holy One, we will also see ourselves as we are—both unholy and infinitely loved.

Like every writer our lives need an editor, the Divine editor! I need a discipline of heart that brings me daily into the presence of the Holy. I require a burning bush, a live coal, a burning heart! As a Trappist novice master once said, the reality of the Holy means that “to be a Christian is not to know the answers but to be a person who is able to live in the part of the self where the question exists.”

Not one day can we afford to be without a glimpse of the Holy as we function in our homes, with our families, while at work, and in the world. Steve Harper in his delightful little study, Devotional Life in the Wesleyan Tradition, tells us that Wesley in addition to his morning and evening prayers had

trained his mind to pray on the hour. These prayers were usually brief, sentence prayers of praise. They were Wesley’s way of bringing the events of his life before God. After this . . . he normally spent the next five to seven minutes in meditation.

We need to identify with Moses in Exodus 33:15 where after the debacle of the golden calf (Exodus 32) he cried out to God about his continuing leadership of the people of Israel, “If your presence will not go. . . “. We need to allow God to prove himself holy in our lives (Ezekiel 36:23. Cf. Isaiah 5:16). In his sermon on verse 8 Phineas Bresee observes that

The men who see farthest into the heavens, see farthest into human need. . . . The depths of our gaze into heaven is the measure of the strength to do God’s work. . . . A man is never quite so active as when he is gathering into his bosom the lightnings which play around the throne.

Now we have an adequate context for

C. The Call of the Prophet (v. 8) The issue in the call of the prophet Isaiah is one of sending a messenger on a special assignment.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I, Send me!”

1.

Isaiah heard! As the seventeenth century poet put it,

Your ports are all superfluous here, Save that which lets in faith, the ear.

Isaiah’s response was a most unusual response. A strong objection is the normal first response in a call narrative, Moses in Exodus 3-4, Gideon in Judges 6, Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1, Amos in Amos 7, and Ezekiel in Ezekiel 1-3 all objected. Moses when he heard God’s call at the burning bush objected not once but four times to the call, beginning with, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (3:10), and ending with “Please, O Lord, send anybody else” (Exodus 4:13). The absence of an objection, however, is normal in the descriptions of the heavenly throne-room. In 1 Kings 22:19 the prophet simply follows through on the word of the LORD given him:

Then Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him.

Watts interprets,

In all these cases in which the prophet is allowed to be present through visionary experience during discussion or decisions in the throne room of God, and thus know the ‘knowledge of God,’ and thus know the ‘knowledge of the Almighty’ . . . he is claimed and empowered to make an unusual and overwhelming proclamation—unusual in it shocking harshness or in its great expectation.

The call of Isaiah differs in its detail from both kinds of narrative. It is unique in the usual prophetic call narratives that the prophet volunteers. No doubt here it was due to the character of his experience, an experience characterized by his raw vision of the Holy: “I am lost . . . your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out” (6:5, 7):

There is an interesting word play in the Hebrew of verses 7 and 8: “Now (hinneh) this has touched your lips . . . Here am I (hinni); send me!” Also in “I heard the voice of the Lord” the title used is `Adonai as in verse 1 where “Lord” refers to God as the Sovereign One, “the absolute overlord of the earth with whom all people have to do.” “LORD, ” the covenant or personal name of Israel’s God was used in verse 5.

2.

The radical removal of the sin barrier is evident in Isaiah’s call, for “only one who has recognized his sin and has been set free can do the will of God.” Only when sin is honestly dealt with is one free to fully respond to the call of God. As Kreider writes on the Holy as a Living Force:

genuinely significant initiatives—initiatives which lead to new departures in faithful living—grow out of a powerful experience of God’s otherness. Francis of Assisi and John Wesley, like Isaiah, knew that an experience of God is the source of endless of energy and imaginative power.

Needed for the moral and spiritual crisis of our day—both in the church and in the nation—is the Vision of the Holy, A Vision of radical sinfulness and an equal vision of radical grace! To serve Christ, to be his obedient servant in all of our relationships and responsibilities we need to seek daily the touch of the Holy at the foot of the Cross—the lifted up Son of Man! We dare not let a day go by without making use of the means of grace available to us like true Wesleyans. And we are not talking about ecstasy or intensive emotion, but simply a faith reality!--the necessity of faith, for .”only in the submission which is faith can we ‘know’ God.”

Next in 6:9-13 is A Vision of Judgment and Hope. The Vision of the Holy: An awesome privilege Isaiah 6:1-13 Three: A Vision of Judgement and Hope (6:8-13) September 25, 2005

Introduction

Hell: the inescapable presence of God endured in the permanent absence of him.

We come to what we can call “the dark side of the holy.”

In Isaiah 6:8-13 the focus falls on the content of the commission and expresses the theological function of Isaiah’s vision. Most sermons on Isaiah 6 end at verse 8 and miss the heart of the chapter in its prophetic context, but not Bresee’s!

So far we have interpreted Isaiah’s Vision of the Holy as

A Vision of the Transcendent (vv. 1-4) bringing Isaiah face to face with A Holy Mystery One (vv. 1-2) that granted him A Holy Perspective (vv. 3-4). This led to A Vision of Sin and Grace (vv. 5-8) in which Isaiah saw The Condition of the Prophet (v. 5), experienced The Cure of God (vv. 6-7), and heard The Call of the Prophet (v. 8).

Isaiah’s “VISION OF THE HOLY” as seen in his call, message and ministry becomes finally A Vision of Judgment and Hope. His vision was first dark:

I. A vision of an inescapable judgment (vv. 8-10)

Judgment is the prophet’s message (6:8-9):

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; Send me!” Out of Isaiah’s experience of and response to personal judgment came the Word of the LORD:: A most startling and scandalous commission!

And He said, “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; Keep looking, but do not understand.’

Tell the people, said the LORD to Isaiah, “Listen, but do not hear! Look, but do not see!”

What a message to deliver! Isaiah’s call was to proclaim judgment, a message reinforced in his own person. Isaiah was thus called up into his message. In this message of failure is seen the certainty of the coming calamity of 586 B.C. on the people of Judah! The hard fact was that Isaiah was called to fail! Is it heretical to say that there is a place for failure in the ministry in obedience to God! One commentator on Isaiah has written that

the preacher of the gospel, who faces the apparent failure of his ministry, and who is therefore tempted to despair, may recognize from the example of Isaiah that he is required to be wholly on the side of God in his heart, and to let himself be used by him as a tool, in whatever way God pleases (cf. Mark 4:1-9).

In Isaiah’s readiness, expressed in his twofold “Here am I,” revealed in his hour of grace are a peace and a freedom which are independent of outward success or failure. As Teresa of Avila insists, “for the Lord gives when He desires, as He desires, and to whom He desires,” writing about “the fourth dwelling places” in “The Interior Castle” (IV.1).

To get to the place of the holy in ministry is to get to a place before God beyond success or failure. Isaiah’s commission, like that of all the servants of God, was “not to be successful in a merely human sense but to be faithful.” As participants in contemporary American evangelical culture and heirs of the “holiness” subculture do we need again to catch the spirit of our California founder, Phineas F. Bresee, whose sermon on verses 9 and 10 is entitled, “Fidelity is Better than Fruit”? Listen to his understanding:

[Isaiah] was prepared for his work by a clear vision of the truth and the touch of fire upon his lips. He was called to stand for God, to declare the will of God. He was not called to succeed as the world counts success, he was not called to popularity. He was called to find his work in being true to God, to find his success in the divine favor, to do God’s work for God’s sake, and leave the work and himself in God’s hands. . . . Many of us are such children that we have to be petted with success. We must have the following and acclaim of the multitude. . . . some of us look to results rather than to God. . . . Divine favor and approval are to you and me the very best possible results. . . . The Word of God has not only a saving power, but even its gentlest pleadings, and purest gospels, even from the mouth of Him who came not to condemn but to save, has a judicial, a hardening, condemning power. . . I love the cause of Christ with an intensity begotten of the fire off heaven’s altar. It drew me from my home in early youth. It has increased and strengthened and become more fervent as the days have gone by. My antagonism to worldliness and formality and earth-seeking becomes more and more intense. My soul looks up to God for heights and depths of anointings such as my earlier ministry knew nothing about; but yet I am continually being disappointed in the results of my own ministry. . . . Our piety is all too shallow. How possible that in the last analysis you may find your motives and ends are selfish.

As evidenced in the opening chapters of Isaiah’s prophecy, made known to Isaiah in his call, is a divine decision already made concerning Israel. We have already seen that the intention in the context of the story of Isaiah’s call is not “merely to legitimize the prophet himself, but to testify that God’s judgment was already decreed when he called him to a task that went beyond all feeling and understanding.” Isaiah’s vision is taken up into the service of his message of judgment!

Hear again the charge that begins Isaiah’s prophecy:

Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth: for the LORD has spoken: I reared children and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.

Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity. offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly,

who have fosaken the LORD, who have despised the Holy One of Israel, who are utterly estranged! (1:2-4). --a litany of judgment that continues for twelve more verses—until verse 15 and then all through cc. 1-5 [3:8-9; 5:18f.]. In 10:23 the prophet declares, ”For the Lord God of hosts will make a full end, as decreed, in all the earth.”

Thus Isaiah “had not merely to proclaim judgment upon his people, but to bring it upon them by this very message, which would harden the hearts of their contemporaries.” So

Judgment is the prophet’s ministry (6:10)

‘Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.’

This has been called Yahweh’s strange work: “It was awe-inspiring—Yahweh presiding over the destruction of his own holy city, Jerusalem.” For “the word of God is not merely withdrawn from the sinful people. It continues to be uttered through the prophet, but only in order to speed the coming judgment.” The message and therefore the ministry of the prophet effects a hardening, and therefore contributes to judgment: All this hardly fits our triumphalist theology!

Isaiah’s preaching will make it more difficult for people to believe. (Like some of ours?) “It is evident,” writes Oswalt, “that something is more important than healing. . . . it is a pure revelation of the character of God and of the human condition”: As Isaiah has already said,

let the plan of the Holy One of Israel hasten to fulfillment, that we may know it!“ (5:19).

The Vision of the Holy as worked out in the ministry of the prophet convinces of the consequences of sin—sin will be judged! That is the nature of the Holy! As sure as God is holy!

But the LORD of hosts is exalted by justice, and the holy God shows himself holy by righteousness (5:16). The light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame; and it will burn and devour his thorns and his briars in a one day (10:17).

The holiness of God means that there is no escape from the judgment of God on sin! Grace is never cheap: “the soul who sins will die” (NASB, Ezekiel 18:4). Sin has its inescapable consequences! It is not to be played with! Sin releases death into our existence: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—“ (Romans 5:12).

I can look back as a Christian, hopefully even as a “sanctified” Christian in the ministry in the heat of the battle, and recall my judgmental attitudes, my cynical and sarcastic words, and my unworthy actions, which at the time I thought were so “right” and so “justified”—now in the light of what I trust is a clearer vision of the Holy in my life are painful to remember. I have suffered the consequences of my pride and subtle ego trips. I did not get away with them—and I still don’t, perhaps even less! If the holy means anything at all, it means we cannot get away with sin! It always has its consequences. Who are we trying to fool, the Holy God of the Cross and the Resurrection? In spite of all we see and hear in our postmodern, perhaps post-Christian culture, I suspect that we still live in a moral universe under the sovereign rule of a holy God!

There is only one way for sin to be dealt with, and that is the way of a holy God--his judgment on sin whether sin properly or sin improperly so-called! Sin has to be suffered out of existence! “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement” (Leviticus 17:11).

Isaiah’s vision of the Holy convinces me of that! Judgment is inevitable! Judgment means that God allows us to have what we have stubbornly chosen: “God gave them up” is a threefold litany in Romans 1:18-32 in the Gospel’s revealing of the wrath of God (v. 18): “so I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels” (Psalm 81:12).. Inescapable!

So we eagerly seek a vision of the Holy, and just as eagerly submit to God’s judgment on our lives, for at the heart of the Holy is “a burning coal,” an “altar,” the purging cross of Jesus! Judgment was what Isaiah himself submitted to—a burning judgment--“a burning coal touched my mouth” (NASB). We want God to reveal it—to burn it out! A burning bush heart! We used to sing at campmeeting,

Though the way seemed straight and narrow, All I claimed was swept away. . . . Then God’s fire upon the altar Of my heart was set aflame.

In the light of the holy only one question remains: Do I seek God’s judgment on the quality of my life now, or wait for him to send it—or hope he never does?

The good news (“gospel”)even in the Old Testament is the proclamation that judgment is not the last word in the purposes of God, for out of Isaiah’s experience of God in his call there arises

II. A vision of a transforming hope (6:11-13)

1. A vision of grace certain in judgment

In the lingo of the call Narrative form 6:11a contains “The Prophet’s Question,” hear Isaiah’s Lament, when he understood his message and ministry: “Then I said, ‘How long, O Lord?” The rest of the chapter, 6:11b-13, consists of “Yahweh’s Answer: Assurance” that divides into two parts, in 6:11b; first The Sign

“And he said, ‘Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and house without people, and the land is utterly desolate.’”

This is of course the Exile, as is indicated in 6:12-13 The Interpretation:

“’until the LORD sends everyone far away, and vast emptiness in the midst of the land. Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again,.

like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled.’”. The holy seed is its stump.

With such a message, such a ministry, no wonder Isaiah cried out in anguish, “How long, O Lord?” Or “Until when Lord?” The reference is probably both to the task of judgment, and to the duration of that judgment. Isaiah is already pleading. He is exercising the office of a true prophet, as he begs for mercy for the people, calling for hope! He is in fact himself a sign of hope, of eventual grace in the very reality of his own forgiveness and cleansing.

Judgment is not spared as verses 11-12 indicate, but there is a faint but distinctive hint of hope in verse 13. :

Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again,. like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled.’”. The holy seed is its stump.

The key phrases are “a tenth . . . whose stump remains . . . the holy seed.” Oswalt suggests that ”there will be an offering holy to the Lord, for the Lord is not finished with Israel. God’s promise to Abraham to bless the nations through his offspring is not to be forgotten (cf. 49:19, 32).”

So the holy means that judgment as such is not God’s last word! Indeeed “the Vision of the Holy” is ultimately

2 A vision of grace after judgment!

Grace follows judgment

The Vision of the Holy means that grace is God’s final word: Hope for the unclean, cut off, the lost, undone, ruined, and silent people! A certainty! The certainty of grace is grounded in the essence of the Holy, for if it is not grounded there, grace cannot be certain! If God is not holy, life has no credible foundation. Therefore the holy people are a gracious, not a judgmental people!

What was there in verse 7—the “burning coal” (NASB)—for Isaiah, is eventually there for the nation. It is there in the hidden mystery of the being of God—in his holiness! For the Cross is at the heart of the Holy. Isaiah declared in 8:17-18, “I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; and I will hope in him.” And as we have seen, out of the midst of judgment Isaiah speaks the invitation of Yahweh, the Lord of Israel,

Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD,

“though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool (1:18).

But take note that

Grace is experienced only after judgment!

An unknown modern monastic insists:

If modern spirituality lays stress on the immanence of God and the sweetness of his intimate relationship with man, it cannot, without tilting into error, ignore the demands of God’s transcendence. Only superficial minds, strangers to the real problems of the interior life, can suppose that God’s mercy has disarmed his justice.

So much so that our hope is only in God! We sincerely seek the judgment of God on our lives because in the end judgment is grace! . . . given the nature of the Holy! There is where we find the ever-flowing stream of grace!--The true function of worship! The heart of the Holy is the Cross: As Hosea reveals, . . .

How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? . . . My heart is turned over within Me, All My compassions are kindled. I will not execute My fierce anger; I will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, And I will not come in wrath (11:8-9).

So Moses,

“If now I have found favor in your sight, O LORD, I pray, let the LORD go with us, although [because (ci)] this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as your inheritance (own possession)” (Exodus 34:9).

The Holy is most present at the point of the radical grace of the Cross! Conclusion

Our need is continually for a vision of the Holy, for

a vision of the Transcendent One a vision of sin and grace a vision of judgment and hope!

for an awesome vision of the Transcendent One, a penetrating vision of sin and grace, an inescapable vision of judgment and hope,

for the transcendent as real as the immanent, for grace as penetrating as sin, for hope as inescapable as judgment.

We need a vision of the Holy in our lives, a perception of grace permeated by a vision of the transcendent Holy One—“the Lord . . . high and lifted up” (NASB): ”And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:13).

Only then will we be able to see grace as grace, for we will have encountered sin as sin, experienced judgment as judgment, and will have received grace as grace.

We close our long study of Isaiah 6 with Johann Sebastian Bach:

Jesu, joy of man’s desiring, holy wisdom, Love most bright, Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring, soer to uncreated light. Word of God, our flesh that fashion’d with the fire of life impassion’d. Striving still to Truth unknown, soaring, dying, round Thy throne. Through the way where Hope is guiding, Hark, what peaceful music rings, Where the flock in Thee confiding, drink of joy from deathless springs. Their’s is beauty’s fairest pleasure, their’s is wisdom’s holiest treasure. Thou dost ever lead thine own, in the love of joys unknown. Isaiah 1:4, 5:19, 24. Contents of Isaiah from Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 60-64, Isaiah 40-66, 16-19: Introduction to the Prophecy: The Present and Future of God’s People (1:1—5:30) A. God’s Denunciation, Appeal, and Promise (1:1-31) The Problem: What Israel Is versus What She Will Be (2:1—4:6) A Harvest of Wild Grapes (5:1-30) The Song of the Vineyard (5:1-7) Woe to the Wild Grapes (5:8-25) Coming Destruction (5:26-30) The Call to Servanthood (6:1-13) The Vision (6:1-8) The Commission (9-13) Whom Shall We Trust? Basis for Servanthood (7:1—39:8) The Vocation of Servanthood (40:1—55:13) The Marks of Servanthood (56:1—66:24) Their point: “Whether you are a secular person who has spiritual sensitivities, or a traditional religious person, you probably know that the Right has gained its power by the misuse of God and religion to justify militarism, an assault on the poor, and ecological insensitivity. Now, it is trying to pack the judiciary with reactionaries. There really is a spiritual crisis in American society—but that crisis is not caused by ‘activist judges,’ liberals, secularists, gays, feminists, or anyone else the Right tries to blame. The spiritual crisis is rooted in the materialism and selfishness ethos of the very corporations that the Right normally champions!” Sam Powell, A Theology of Spiritualilty (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 2 in the manuscript. Sam’s chapters are Chapter one: a prelude to Christian spirituality Chapter two: spirituality in America today Chapter three: the theological foundations of christian spirituality Chapter four: baptism Chapter five: faith Chapter six: worship Chapter seven: discipline Chapter eight: Christian virtues Chapter nine: works of love: generosity and justice Chapter ten: works of love: caring for creation Pre-prophetic call narratives are found in Exodus 3:1—4:17 (Moses) and Judges 6:11-24 (Gideon). Watts, Isaiah 1-33, 76. Kaiser, 1972, 73. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, 76. Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 55. Ibid., 176. I was ordained by Hardy Powers in 1956 on the Nebraska District at Lincoln, Nebraska. That study was eventually published as “The Quest for the Holy: The Darkness of God” in the Wesleyan Theological Journal as the Presidential address at the 1987 meeting of the Wesleyan Theological Society. Often used as the passage for study in the class on Hebrew exegesis. Another text that fascinated me was Leviticus 9:22—10:3 in context—Aaron’s “unholy [“strange” NASB] fire before the LORD.” “antifoundationalism” is an accepted characteristic of the postmodern ethos. Oswalt, Isaiah, 1-39, 174. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle,III. 1, 9.) Forward Day By Day (May/June/July 2005). Powell, Spirituality, 17-18. Isaiah 1:4, 5:19, 24. Contents of Isaiah from Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 60-64, Isaiah 40-66, 16-19: Introduction to the Prophecy: The Present and Future of God’s People (1:1—5:30) A. God’s Denunciation, Appeal, and Promise (1:1-31) The Problem: What Israel Is versus What She Will Be (2:1—4:6) A Harvest of Wild Grapes (5:1-30) The Song of the Vineyard (5:1-7) Woe to the Wild Grapes (5:8-25) Coming Destruction (5:26-30) The Call to Servanthood (6:1-13) The Vision (6:1-8) The Commission (9-13) Whom Shall We Trust? Basis for Servanthood (7:1—39:8) The Vocation of Servanthood (40:1—55:13) The Marks of Servanthood (56:1—66:24) Herb had graciously given us his tickets to the Padre game, Betty, Phyllis Skidgel, and I had parked at 8th and E, and were walking down 5th looking for a reasonable place to eat. The menu outside Maloney’s Tavern appeared affordable and appetizing, so in we went. We were almost the only customers at 5:30 in the afternoon. Smith, “Isaiah,” 631. Richard S. Taylor, A Return to Christian Culture: Christian Ideals in a Sagging Society (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1973), 33-34. Ibid., 176. The New Testament speaks of the “lifted up” Son of Man. John 3:14; 12:32-34. See Deuteronomy 5:2-26. Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 177. R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1987), 14. Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 177. Some think as probably in Exodus 4:25 and Isaiah 7:20 “feet” is used here as a way to avoid mentioning the genital area. See also Ruth3:4, 7, 8. Ibid., 178. Ibid., 179. He comments that “fire is everywhere associated with God’s holiness (Exod. 3:1-6; 13:21; 19:18; Lev. 10:1-2; Num. 11:1-2; 1 K. 18:24; Isa 5:6-7) so that it would be entirely appropriate for those who declare that holiness (v. 3) to be ‘fiery’in their appearance.” Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, 2nd ed., (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958). Otto Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12, A Commentary: The Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1972), 77. Ibid. Sproul, Holiness, 40. Commonly held by scholars to be 736 B.C., but Albright’s chronology, followed by some, dates Uzziah’s death in 742. Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 177. Quoted by Walter Brueggemann, “Holy Intrusion: The Power of Dreams in the Bible,” Christian Century (June 28, 2005), 31. Tony Hendra, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul (New York: Random House, 2004), 86. Ibid., 181. Sproul, Holiness, 39-40. Smith, “Isaiah,” 633. Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 180. Or, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (NASB). Ibid., 181. See also 180. Otto2, Isaiah 1-12, A Commentary: The Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 2nd ed., 1983), 127. The quote is from E. Brunner, Revelation and Reason (1945), 45. Therefore the use of the light and darkness metaphors in the apophatic tradition, for example the 16th century John of the Cross. Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12 (1976), 79. Childs, Isaiah, 55. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, 74. Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12 (1972), 78-79. Quoted from Thomas Dubay, Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel—on Prayer (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 189, cf. pp. 148, 180, 188. Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12 (1983), 128. Alan Kreider, Journey Towards Holiness: A Way of Living for God’s Nation (Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, 1987), 37-38. The quote is from Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 6, 10. John 3:14; 12:32. See 12:20-36. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Gracias! A Latin American Journal (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983). 69-70. “you” in the 1988 NTS lectures to future ministers! Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1951, 1979), 105-106. Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray (New York: Paulist Press, 1970), 92-93. Foster, Prayer, 96-97. I possess a copy of the music from that service which you can have for the asking. Isaiah 1:4, 5:19, 24. Contents of Isaiah from Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 60-64, Isaiah 40-66, 16-19: Introduction to the Prophecy: The Present and Future of God’s People (1:1—5:30) A. God’s Denunciation, Appeal, and Promise (1:1-31) The Problem: What Israel Is versus What She Will Be (2:1—4:6) A Harvest of Wild Grapes (5:1-30) The Song of the Vineyard (5:1-7) Woe to the Wild Grapes (5:8-25) Coming Destruction (5:26-30) The Call to Servanthood (6:1-13) The Vision (6:1-8) The Commission (9-13) Whom Shall We Trust? Basis for Servanthood (7:1—39:8) The Vocation of Servanthood (40:1—55:13) The Marks of Servanthood (56:1—66:24) Lines 145-152 of “A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the Admirable Saint Teresa,” Robert T. Petersson, The Art of Ecstacy: Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw (New York: Athenum, 1974), 111. The book examines the three. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Italian artist, who for his Cornaro Chapel in a church in Rome, Santa Maria Della Vittoria, designed in 1646 “the Ecstacy of St. Teresa,” called “one of the greatest sculptures of all time.” Friends Keith and Betty Sears gave me both the book and a 14” x 21” picture of the sculpture which hangs in my “corner.” Spiritual Marriage is the term used to describe the highest degree of contemplative prayer experienced by the mystic. Although the term has a long history, this usage was established by St. Teresa and John of the Cross in the sixteenth century. Newsweek (August 1, 2005), 21. Craig Hovey, in a review of D. Brent Laytham, ed., God Is Not . . . Religious, Nice, “One of Us,” an American, a Capitalist (Brazos) in Christian Century (May 17, 2005), 57. Bold type is mine. Percy C. Ainsworth, “The Pilgrim Church,” Weavings xx:4 (July/August 2005), 9-10, 12-13. He was author of The Pilgrim Church and Other Sermons, The Threshold of Grace: Meditations on the Psalms, Poems and Sonnets, The Supreme Grace, and The Blessed Life: Short Addresses on the Beatitude. “He was remembered by a friend as a preacher who continually placed people before the ‘mystery of the soul’s life’ and invited them to enter its ‘unexplored depths.’” Bold type is mine. Merton, Ascent, 107.. Ibid., 105. See his whole passage, 105-107. Phineas F. Bresee, Sermons on Isaiah (Kansas City, Missouri: Nazarene Publishing House, 1926), 34-35. Sproul, Holiness, 43. Wildberger, Isaiah, 268. Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 55. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, 69.. Í am silent” is a translation widely adopted by scholars. Ibid., 43-44. , Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12 (1956), 80. See Exodus 19:21; 33:20; Judges 6:22f., 13:22. See John 1:18. I became aware recently of a young pastor in Texas who has an independent congregation, inherited from his father, which has now reached 30,000 in attendance, the largest church in America. Its young, charismatic pastor preaches a thinly evangelical version of a prosperity gospel, therapeutic to the core. See “Jason Byassee, “Be Happy: the health and wealth gospel,” Christian Centry (July 12, 2005), 20-23. Childs, Isaiah, 55-56. Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 183. San Diego, “THE NEW SIN CITY.” Newsweek (August 1, 2005), 34. Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12 (1983), 128f. Ibid., 129. See Matthew 15:18ff. and James 3:6-12. Sproul, Holiness, 25f. Isaiah 1:4, 5:19, 24. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, “Why Worry About Words?” The Princeton Seminary Bulletin Volume XXVI Number 1 New Series (2005), 75-76. This was the first of the Stone Lectures delivered October 4, 2004. She lists numerous kinds of language abuse, i.e., overgeneralization and thoughtless hyperbole, e.g. “best ever,” “really exciting, and “most regrettably ‘awesome,’” 78. She also talks about the “normalization” of language with unexamined notions of what “normal” may be; we have normalized the language of war, of pedantry (inaccessible academic lingo), and greed. Ibid., 80. (In 1999, 38 percent of all churches used praise choruses; now 74 percent do.) Found in the column “Centurymarks,” Christian Century (July 12, 2005), 6. Sproul, Holiness, 25f. Ibid., 47. See Petersson, The Art of Ecstasy, 161-162, for some background and the use of the symbols of “fire” and “flame” in the arts. “Guilt” or “iniquity” designates “Isaiah’s sinful nature as such” created “by individual sinful acts.” “Sin” refers to specific offenses which grow out of Isaiah’s condition and “threaten the existence of the human being.” “”Blotted out” or “covered” is the Hebrew verb capher which is the much used word for “making atonement” in the Old Testament. Here “the fact that the atonement does not take place solely within the realm of the spoken word but, so to speak, takes place within a sacramental action serves to underscore the reality and authentic power inherent in the action.” Wildberger, Isaiah, 269-270. Bresee, Sermons, 39-40. Kreider, Journey, 38. Wendy M. Wright, “Reflections on Spiritual Friendship,” Weavings, Volume II, Number 4 (July/August, 1987), 21. Steve Harper, Devotional Life in the Wesleyan Tradition (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1983), 21. Bresee, Sermons, 41, 45-46. Petersson, The Art of Ecstasy, 119, quoting lines from Richard Crashaw. See Romans 10:14-17. Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974), 49. Cf. verses 20-28, also Exodus 24:9-10. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, 71f. He is quoting F. Horst, “Die Visionsschilderungen der alttestamentlichen Propheten,” Expository Times 20 (1960), 98. Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 177. Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12 (1972), 81. Kreider, Journey, 38. Ibid., 105. See his whole passage, 105-107. July 31—September 25, 2005. Jill Alexander Essbaum, “Variety of Hells,” Christian Century (July 12, 2005), 11. A poem. Romans 1:18 has been described as “the dark side of the Gospel”: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.” My memory says it was Karl Barth in his smaller commentary on Romans.. These words are taken up into the NT by Jesus in the Synoptics, in John 12 and by Paul in Acts 28 to account for the mystery of unbelief--a problem left for the Calvinists and Arminians to solve! So we with our Western rationalism have solved the mystery and forfeited the power, each in our own way. Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12 (1972), 86. Also in 8:18 behind the NRSV translation, “See, I.” Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, trans., The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Volume Two (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1980), 317. Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 190. Bresee, Sermons, 51-59. See 53f., 55, 56-57 for more “a judicial, hardening power.” Kaiser Isaiah 1-12 (1972), 73. Israel fell in 721 B.C. and Judah in 586. These prophecies probably are directed to both. Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12 (1972), 73. We too may become instruments of hardening (2 Cor. 3:15-16)! Kreider, Journey, 117. Ibid., 83. Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 189. See 5:13-16. See Psalm 18:4-24; 97:3. In loyalty to the Isianic context we should have commented here on the relation of the holy to the societal justice of our own day, for as we have seen it was Isaiah’s primary application for his concern for the holy. 2 Corinthian 2:10 reads literally “for all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive in accordance with what has been done (ta pros ha epraxen) through the body, whether good or evil.” Margaret J. Harris, “I Will Praise Him,” Sing to the Lord (Kansas City, Missouri: Lillenas Publishing Company,1993), 119. “Yet there will be a tenth portion in it.” (NASB),

But see Watts, Isaiah 1-33, 76f. “Yet there will be a tenth portion in it.” (NASB), Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 191. Obviously we are not speaking of grace in terms of God’s prevenient grace, Wesley’s “preventing grace,” which is at work in all men, everywhere, all the time drawing people to himself. The Hermitage of the Desert: Spirituality of the Desert, tran. Alan Neame (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), 56. Document.

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Frank G. Carver