The Vision of God and the Mission of God
Isaiah 6
What Isaiah saw
Isaiah is sent by God on an impossible mission. He is to preach, without anyone taking seriously what he says. He is to preach, and to watch Israel harden her heart under his preaching. In fact, he is “to make the hearts of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes” (Isa 6.10). How long? For a month, a year, and then at last success will come? “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant,” and the people are taken into exile, “and the forsaken places are many in the land,” and Israel is like an oak tree cut down and left with nothing but a stump (vv. 11-13). True, hidden in that stump is the holy “seed,” which will grow up into the Messiah – but not for long centuries after Isaiah’s death.
How did Isaiah do it? How did he remain faithful to his mission, in the face of such daunting challenges? It may even be that he is the man referred to in Heb 11 and in the early tradition of the church, who met his death by being saw in two. What was it that empowered Isaiah for faithfulness to his call?
He had seen the Lord. He had seen a vision of the incomparable glory of YHWH, the living and true God, and that glimpse of divine glory was sufficient to steel him for courageous witness and prophetic speech no matter what.
What did he see? V. 1: “I saw the Lord sitting upon his throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.” He saw the Lord in his lordship, in his awesome sovereignty as King of kings. He saw the Lord in his exaltation, his highness, his transcendence, his supreme greatness over all things. He saw that the temple made with hands could not possibly contain him; it was filled to the brim with the mere train of his robe. But that is not all.
He saw the seraphim. What are they? The most glorious creatures imaginable, so full of life and power that when mere mortals see them we are overwhelmed and respond instinctively with worship (which they always reject, as fellow-servants of the only Lord our God). The seraphim cannot look upon the brilliant radiance of God. The light of his glory dazzles them, blinds them. “He dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Tim 6.16). Glorious as they are, they must shield their eyes with their wings; glorious as they are, pure as they are, they must cover their feet in the presence of God; and they cry out in endless praise, “Holy, Holy, Holy!”
The holiness of God is his purity, the complete, unalloyed perfection of his goodness, justice, power, and love. Not just the absence of sin, but the entire infinite presence of goodness, of light. That is why, in the Bible, the holiness of God and the incomparability of God are much the same thing. To catch a glimpse of his holiness is to recognize that there is simply none like Him. “Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exod 15.11). “There is none holy like the LORD, for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God” (1 Sam 2.2). The seraphim see this radiance out of the corner of their eyes, and can do nothing but cry out: “Holy!” Michael the archangel couldn’t have a more fitting name: “Who is like God?” Their whole being, heart & soul, is seized with the majestic glory of the Lord, and their whole life is a life of joyful praise of his glory.
Isaiah sees all this, and stands in awe. But there is more. First, the earthquake: the Temple itself, the holiest place on earth, is shaken to the foundations by the presence of the Lord, by the descent of his glory. Earthquakes are not uncommon when God shows up: “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob” (Ps 114.7). The earth cracks apart under the sheer weight of his presence, the sheer reality of his glory.
At this point, Isaiah realizes the game is up; it’s all over for him. “Woe is me! For I am undone.” He sees, in the terrifying light of God’s holiness and glory, that he is lost, a sinner, a dead man, who could only be consumed by the fire of this great and awesome God. He sees too that his most prized possession, the thing he boasted about, the thing that made him unique and special and important and valuable – his “lips,” his eloquence as a writer and speaker – is shown up and exposed as nothing and less than nothing and emptiness in the presence of the Lord of glory and at the sound of his majestic voice. He is doomed.
But then a miracle happens. Isaiah is touched by the fire of God, by a burning coal from under the altar – only he is cleansed, not consumed. He hears the promise of grace: “Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (v. 7). The God of infinite holiness is full of mercy and compassion; the God who is light, the God in whom there is no darkness at all, is the God who is love, who makes a way for the sons of Adam to enter his presence by atoning for their sin by the sacrifice of his Son. Here in Isaiah 6, he sees the Lord high & lifted up in his glory; later, in Isaiah 52-53, he sees the Servant of the Lord, high & lifted up, not in his glory but in the shame and humiliation of his death for us on the Cross: and in both cases, he sees a true vision of the true God.
This is what sustains Isaiah in his mission: this vision of the glory of the Lord, this experience of the reality of the great and mighty Lord who is not like us, whose holiness poses a threat to our very being but whose forgiving love and tender mercy embrace us in Jesus Christ. The “Godness of God.” Catching sight of it – that is, a sight of Him – is what sustains mission through thick and thin. A vision of the glory of YHWH.
What is the glory of the Lord?
The whole Bible is the revelation of the glory of the Lord. From creation to consummation, we see the mighty deeds of the Lord, and in and through them he reveals his glory. By paying attention to what he does, we are able to come to some understanding of who he is, of his perfections, of his glory. Along the way, the Lord himself declares his “Name,” talking with prophets & apostles and authorizing them to speak about him in order to make his name and glory known.
Let’s look at a few of his mighty acts of old, to gather a few glimpses of his glory. First things first: the creation of the world out of nothing by the word of his power. “In the beginning, God” (Gen 1.1): he already was, if it even makes sense to use words like “already” and “was” of the God who simply and eternally is, the everlasting God. “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps 90.2). Why did he create the world? Because he was lonely? Because he needed something to complete him? Perish the thought. Our God was never lonely, because in the beginning was the Word, his Son, and the Spirit who eternally proceeds from the Father’s love for the Son and the Son’s for the Father and fills the heart of God with unimaginable gladness and joy. The God who is love – Father, Son & Spirit – needed nothing to complete him; he already possessed everything simply by being himself, the all-sufficient, all-blessed, all-happy God. Why then did he make the world? Out of simple joy and delight, out of a free overflow of his boundless goodness, and to the praise of his glory. How did he make the world? By what means, and out of what matter? He created the world by speaking it into being out of nothing. 10 billion galaxies and counting. The Rocky Mountains. Orcas and earthworms and archangels and men. All were not at all, then came into being out of nothing. Truly an act of breathtaking power, matched only by the infinite wisdom that could design and fashion such a world, and the infinite beauty that could do so with such artistry and skill, and the infinite goodness that would see fit to give life and breath and everything as a free gift of his generous love.
Can you see something of the glory of the Lord?
As we move forward from Gen 1-2 to Gen 3 and beyond, other aspects of the glory of the Lord begin to be unveiled as he acts in history of man after the fall. In short, God brings judgment upon sin and shows mercy to sinners. Never just one or the other, always both: judgment and mercy, justice and grace, holiness and love, because this is who God is. In the Garden, God arraigns the Serpent, Adam and Eve before his judgment seat and pronounces the sentence of his justice upon them. But in the very same breath, he speaks his word of promise, mercy, grace and love: the “Seed” of Eve, a true descendent of Adam, will crush the Serpent’s head and save the human race. Read further on, and you find the same dynamic of judgment and grace in the story of the Flood. The world of the ungodly perishes in the floodwaters, but Noah and his family are saved in the ark. In Gen 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, we find just the same thing: “The Just Judge of all the earth” (Gen 18.25) destroys the cities of the valley but has mercy on Lot, “the LORD being merciful to him” (19.16).
Both stories of judgment and salvation lead up to the initial climax of the ancient history: the deliverance of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. In a way, this is the “gospel” of the OT: the great story of redemption, of what God did to save his people and set them free. All his perfections are on full display: his longsuffering patience in his dealings with Pharaoh, warning by warning, plague by plague; his faithfulness, in remembering his promises to the patriarchs; his mercy, in hearing the cries of the slaves; his justice, in overthrowing the gods of Egypt and killing Pharaoh’s firstborn son; his omnipotent power, in crippling Egypt’s economy, leading Israel out “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,” parting the Sea, shepherding his people through it, before finally destroying the army of Egypt in a flood of justice. On the far side of the Sea, Moses sings the praises of the Lord as the Lord has revealed himself through this great salvation: awesome in justice, majestic in power, abundant in steadfast love. “Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power, your right hand, O LORD, shatters the enemy … You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode” (Exod 15.6, 13).
And the thing you almost miss, caught up as you are in the power and might and glory of the Lord on display in this story, is the simple fact that God chose to be the God of these slaves. There is a revelation in this of the humility of our God. He is unassuming. He is not impressed by the riches or power of men. He is not overawed by the empire of Egypt. He loves these shepherds, he takes pleasure in these slaves, he remembers the promise he made to one single man, his friend Abraham, four centuries before. So, he marshals all the perfections of his infinite glorious Being to fight for the underdog, casting down the mighty from their thrones but lifting up the lowly (as Mary would later sing). This becomes a great theme of prophecy for the rest of the OT. Hannah sings of it: “The bows of the might are broken, but the feeble bind on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children are forlorn” (1 Sam 2.4-5). The Psalms are full of it, e.g. 138.6: “Though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar.” Or 113.5-9: “Who is like YHWH our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash-heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Hallelujah!” But the last word on this score goes to Isaiah: “Thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite” (57.15).
By the time you get to Malachi, you have a rich and ever-deepening sense of the glory of the Lord. The perfections we find listed out one-by-one in the Confessions of the church are all there in the OT: the infinite being of God, his eternity, omnipotence, wisdom, goodness, justice, truth, mercy, and so forth. But don’t let tidy textbook answers about God fool you into thinking that by listing out his attributes we have grasped and defined him. There is also something of a riddle, a set of paradoxes that prophets have proclaimed but have not reasoned out or resolved. How is it that God is who he says he is in Exod 34.6-7: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love … but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation?” Is he more one or the other? Will justice tip the scales in the end and win out, or will mercy triumph over judgment? That’s the first riddle. The second is: is God more himself when he is exalted in majesty, or when he is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit? He dwells in the high and holy place; he dwells in the man whose heart is crushed: how can this be?
Then you turn the page to the NT, and you find the answer. No one has ever seen God; but the only God, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known. How? By becoming flesh, and dwelling among us, so that we might see his glory. Is God high or low? Look at this Child; the baby in Mary’s arms is the Maker of the stars. He is so great, that he is able to come this low. He is so powerful, that he is able to become this weak. He is so majestic, so secure in his true glory, that he doesn’t mind embracing this humiliation. Though he was in the form of God, by nature equal to God, the Son did not count his equal glory something to grasp after and possess; he made himself nothing, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. Tell me, which is more like God: when the Word of God made the stars, or when the Word wrapped a towel around his waist and washed his disciples’ feet? The astonishing claim of the Bible is that the glory of the Lord shines forth in both deeds; but if anything, I daresay the foot-washing is the more remarkable. In our pride, we expect God to do God-like things, but what we do not expect and could never have imagined and still barely believe ourselves is that God would do such un-godly things (if you will) as stoop to scrub dirt and feces off his creatures’ feet or give himself to be stripped bare and executed on a Roman Cross.
That brings us to the other OT paradox, the riddle of the infinite justice and infinite mercy of God. The Cross of Christ doesn’t solve the riddle or lessen the paradox. It brings it to a head. It amps it up. It puts it on full display. It makes it the turning point of history and the center point of all reality. Was the justice of God revealed in the Flood, at Sodom, and in Egypt? Yes, but how can any of those judgments even be spoken of in the same breath as the death of God’s Son? Nothing less than the blood of God sufficed to atone for the sin of man. Think about that. How awesome is the holiness of the Lord! How perfect, how exacting his justice! No sin is left unpunished, no rebellion left undealt with, no evil left unavenged. And yet: in the very same event of the Cross the heart of God is revealed as a heart huge with mercy and bursting with love. God so loved the world, that he gave his Son. He so loved sinners, that he did not spare his Son. “God shows his love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5.6). “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the wrath-bearing sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4.10). In the Cross of Christ, mercy and faithfulness meet, righteousness and peace kiss each other. In the words of the Belgic Confession: “So God made known his justice toward his Son, who was charged with our sin, and he poured out his goodness and mercy on us, who are guilty and worthy of damnation, giving to us his Son to die by a most perfect love” (art. 20).
But on the third day, he rose again from the dead. It was not possible for death to hold him bound. Why? Because this God of humble love and merciful justice is none other than the God of creation, the God of life, the God of infinite fullness and abundance, the God who is joy, and who delights to share his joy with his creatures. Evil and Death did their worst, but it could not stop God. He swallowed up Death by Life, and his promise to us who believe is that we will share in his victory and joy, forever. We will see his face, and his Name will be on our foreheads. His glory will not consume us. His glory will delight us. And he will wipe away every tear from our eye. It will be said on that day: “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD: we have waited for him; come, let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation” (Isaiah 25.9).
This is the Lord our God; this is his glory, the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.
How to put this to use
There is no “use,” apart from praise. Stop and consider this. We are so turned around and upside down and twisted towards our own little selves that in our foolish pride we aren’t interested in the glory of the Lord unless we can see how it profits us. But the whole point is to see that nothing else matters at all. If this is the truth about God, then let me lose all if only he be praised. If this is the true glory of the Lord, then let me suffer all if only he be praised. If this is who God is, then let me live and suffer and die for him alone. In reflecting on his Godness, his greatness, his infinite glory, the point is to praise God. There is a good line from Luther, on the story about Jacob’s ladder in Gen 28. The ladder he interprets as a prophecy of Jesus Christ. The angels, you’ll remember, go up and down on the ladder: that is a picture of the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Go up high as they may, they cannot attain to the heights of his glory; go down low as they may, they cannot fathom the depths of his abasement in our flesh; but whether they go up or go down, they adore him.
O Lord God, grant us hearts like these angels. That is the practical application of seeing something of the Godness of God: to get a zeal for his glory like that of an angel, and a constancy in his service like that of Isaiah, and a love for lost and lowly things that is a partial but real participation in the love of Jesus Christ himself.
Phil Anderas is an ordained ministers and holds a PhD in Historical Theology from Marquette University. He is a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
