Law & Grace - Woe is me, for I am ruined! (Isaiah 6:1-5)

Good morning. We will be turning to the passage Isaiah chapter 6, and in the first five verses will be our subject passage here. Just to kind of keep things in perspective, this is the last Old Testament passage we'll be focusing on. We will certainly quote it again, but our focus here will end with today's study. And we'll begin next Sunday a series still in Law and Grace, but studying through the Gospel of Matthew. That will actually continue on, likely for some months to come here. Even by the end of June, we will just be starting in Matthew chapter 5. So at any rate, that's kind of the perspective here. We're still continuing in the Law and Grace series, finishing the Old Testament focus for the time being.

Now, the quick wrap-up of Isaiah chapter 6. The whole chapter goes kind of like this. The first seven verses, and we're going to study the first five of those, we're going to compare that in detail this morning, tells of Isaiah's visit to heaven, his vision, if you will, into heaven's throne room. In verse 8, the Lord commissions Isaiah to speak to Judah, And then in verses 9 and 10, we find a description of the heart disease which kept the people from responding to Isaiah's message, that is their spiritual heart problem. And then finally, 11-13 talk about the external conditions, the political and military conditions in the land of Judah and surrounding it. OK, as we center into this particular passage, we're moving from some of the earlier Old Testament passages we've covered from Exodus and through Joshua.

Isaiah here has written a book that makes it clear. He's a Hebrew holy man. There's no doubt about it. He is even, I would call, a great Hebrew holy man. He was a court prophet for several kings of Judah. Isaiah 1.1 makes it clear. that he wrote this book during the reigns of Uzziah and Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. It goes beyond what scripture directly reveals in detail anyway. He continued on into the time of Hezekiah's son and was ultimately pursued And as is recorded in part elsewhere and also in the book of Hebrews, it has him ending his life, being sawn into a life.

He is a man whose children's names were used of God. You don't name your kids Sher-Jashub and Meher-Shallal-Hashbaz without a very good reason. So he was a man who had these children's names deliberately given as part of his ministry in the early chapters 7 and 8 of Isaiah. Those names and the reasons for them are recorded.

He was the chosen author of 66 chapters of inspired scripture. We studied through those chapters a few years back. Real interesting, 66 chapters is what he wrote. Guess how many books there are in the Bible? 66 books, right? And the 39th book of the Bible is Malachi. The next one starts the New Testament and guess what? As you go to chapter 40, the 40th book in the Bible is Matthew, but you go to chapter 40 in Isaiah and you begin to get New Testament messages. Very interesting. He is the chosen author of these 66 chapters of inspired scripture.

He lives and carries out his ministry, however, and we have to make this point, at the time where the law of Moses is the reigning principle. We've made the kind of broad point this way. The children of Israel were baptized into Moses. That's what Paul says in first Corinthians chapter 10. We, however, in the church are baptized into Christ. They were living at a time when the law was the reigning principle. Romans chapter 5 says that now grace is the reigning principle. So here is Isaiah living at a time when the law is the reigning principle. He even being a Hebrew holy man, he being a court prophet, he writing scripture still living under this time of law.

Isaiah writes about the law in Isaiah 42 verses 21 through 24 he starts off Verse 21. He says the Lord was pleased for his righteousness sake to make the law great and glorious The Lord is the one who wrote the law. Okay, the law isn't some kind of a Well, who came up with this? It was the Lord who came up with it. It the law is great and glorious New Testament is called good and righteous and holy And then in verse 24 in this passage, the last references there is whose law?

The Lord's law they did not obey, the Israelites to whom it was given. So we have some questions here as we enter this heavenly scene. Coming from the place as God's own chosen mouthpiece to the people of Israel, this is Isaiah. How does Isaiah respond to this realization that he is seeing God? We'll want to look at that as we look at this passage. How does he respond to the idea that he is seeing God? Does he kind of say, hey, you know, this is really a nice opportunity to chat with you and just really be cool if I can kind of hang out here a while? Is that his response? Not even close.

As a man who is writing divinely inspired scripture, in other words, the Holy Spirit is carrying him along, as Peter writes. The Holy Spirit is inspiring him to write. As a man who knows the Holy Spirit's work through him, how comfortable does Isaiah seem to be with the idea that he is right there in heaven with the one awesome Holy God. Real comfortable with it? At ease? Does the law equip him to be in God's presence? Does the law as the reigning principle equip him to be in God's presence?

In Isaiah 6.1 it begins with this.

It gives us a sense of timing. In the year of King Uzziah's death, Isaiah gives us a date and a kind of time. Reason being this, Uzziah the king has been the most powerful king in Jerusalem since the time of Solomon almost two centuries before. A powerful and actually good king up to this point.

An interesting piece here, right on the Mount of Olives, right directly across from where the temple was, the Mount of Olives, where Jesus gave the Olivet Discourse, where Jesus ascended into heaven. Right there on that mount, this plaque here was found, and it reads, here the bones of Uzziah, king of Judah, were brought. Do not open. So his burial plaque was found there. But this king Uzziah, He died a leper in his last year.

Why? He became proud. He said, I've been such a great king. I mean, this has really been cool. Now I want to be a priest too. So he goes and rushes into the temple and all the priests are saying, Isaiah, you know, it's great to have you here, but you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. You are not of the tribe of Levi. This is very bad. He became a leper and died there in his last year because of carrying this out. So that's the time that Isaiah is talking about, and it's also the kind of time. It was a time of, here is a great king who disgraced himself. You see that? He says there in the next phrase, I saw the Lord. Isaiah only briefly describes is seeing the Lord God himself. I saw the Lord. And what does he say? First that God is seated on his throne, lofty and exalted.

To kind of give some point of comparison, I was reading once about a climber, a mountain climber in Europe who had climbed a number of the mountains up in the Alps. And He had apparently become quite renowned and quite skilled at his climbing the Alps in Europe. Well, in his first time going to the Himalayas, he was looking at those mountains.

And he says, wow, those are really something. And there was a guide, a local guide, next to him. And he looked up, and he looked up, and he looked up. And he said, wow. And he asked the guide next to him, what do you call those mountains? And the guide says, oh, we don't have a name for those. Those are just the foothills.

Isaiah kind of had this kind of a sense here where he was like, whoa, whoa. There was a grandness and an exaltation and a loftiness to what he experienced and viewed there. The Lord's great authority is awesomely evident awesomely evident. Isaiah also says that the train of his robe fills the temple with his glory.

You see, the Lord's presence there in heaven is not one of those things where you kind of walk on the heavenly scene and you say, hey, tell me where God is. It's not that kind of a thing. There's no guidance. This is God. There's no question. He didn't have some angel come up and say, hey, I'd like to introduce you to God here. Shake hands, right? None of that. He looks and he says, this is the Lord. I have no question. There is a grandness. There is a majesty to what I see. I've got no question about who he is.

God has a filling and majestic presence in this scene that's obviously overwhelming Isaiah. Isaiah is in the temple of heaven you see we have this idea that we have these temples that we build on earth But all those things are is is temporary and minuscule Attempted reproductions of what is in heaven that's the ultimate temple all that we have is little symbolic constructions That's the temple, okay, that's the real temple Now, let's talk about a train in Isaiah's day. What does he mean by train? What is he talking about? Does he mean something like this? Is that what he means? Probably not.

A special train or hem on a robe was for a royal position or a holy role. Now, you know that somebody who has a holy role, they're holy rollers, right? Okay. Such as a king or a priest. The longer hems with long tassels and things of that sort also meant great and awesome power. So the more attachments and the size of it would communicate this great and awesome power. And that would have been the custom and royalty in folks of that sort.

Robes of important people often had purple fabric or bells. The bells were often made of valuable metals, precious metals. The purple fabric was valuable. The cost to make the purple dye was more per ounce for that dye than gold. It was very expensive stuff.

So to have the train or hem of the Lord's robe to be so large as to fill the temple with His glory, and that also speaks not just of the largeness of His robe, but of the largeness of His glory. This is no glory light, less filling. None of that. It speaks of, it conveys His ultimate holiness and the overwhelming power of the Lord.

Now it says there in verse 2 that the Seraphim stood above Him. This is the only clear description of Seraphim, at least with that name, in the Bible. Seraphim is one of the few different kinds of angels. And the Hebrew word transliterated here is seraphim.

In other words, they take the sound and simply transliterate, carry the sound across. It means burning ones, or the singular, then, meaning a burning one. I've got this artist's depiction. I'm not real big on all the kind of medieval military appearance. But the one thing that this artist has done a good job of is showing the wings and in that position because it fits the description of what Isaiah 6 says. Hebrew words that end in i-m, like seraphim, indicate plurality. Like we use the word the s in English. So the singular form of seraphim is a seraph. One seraph then would be the correct word or plural, seraphim.

So the seraph is described, the singular seraph, is described with two wings to cover his face, as this picture well illustrates, two to cover his feet, and the other two wings to fly. Interesting. We would think that some creature would use all the wing capacity it had to fly, but no, this only needs one third of its wing capacity to fly.

The other are for covering. Now we have a comparison of living beings from Revelation chapter 4 and also two different chapters in Ezekiel and this chapter in Isaiah. This is a supplemental handout. It's available in the cabinet to the right as you exit this room or you can download it from the website in the files associated with this message here. It's real interesting to see the comparisons and what is very similar and also a few items that are different.

Okay, in verses 3 or 4, 3 and 4, he says, one called out. Okay? So what's this one called out? What we see here in the rest of verses 3 and 4 is the impact on the heavenly scene, this great and grand and majestic place where Isaiah has been called to from the voice of just one seraph. Just one. Verse 4 makes that clear. Here's what is insightful about these couple of verses.

One is what the seraph said, and we'll take a look at that certainly, but also the great magnitude of the power with which the one seraph spoke. One seraph speaks, and there is astounding power in his words. When we were going through the Book of Revelation some years ago, The book of Revelation has a number of places where it talks about a loud voice or loud voices. And just to make the point, I would speak with a loud voice, right? To make the point emphatic. And unfortunately, they had the speakers turned on in the nursery. And I woke up the kids every time. It got them really upset. So I was told I'd better soften on that. So I'll do that once.

Holy, holy, holy is the next thing that the seraph says there. So why is it that the seraph doesn't just say holy and then just move on with it? I mean, one holy, isn't that enough? So why does he say holy, holy, holy? Why the three? Well, one of the things is to realize that in the Hebrew language, one way to emphasize something or to show the extremity of something is to repeat it.

And the example here is a passage in Isaiah 26.3 in the King James Version, which is probably the version most of you are familiar with for this verse. Thou will keep him in perfect peace. Matter of fact, we even sing a song with those words, whose mind is stayed on thee.

In the original language, it doesn't say actually perfect peace. Literally, it says peace, peace. Twice peace. is said in order to emphasize it and to talk about the extreme character of that piece. So when you see holy, holy, holy, that's actually three times. We're talking about perfectly, perfectly holy, right? We're talking about extremely holy. So to say something twice was enough to make emphasis, but to say it three times was extraordinary emphasis. The ultimate perfection of that quality and character. You just couldn't get any more underscored and extreme and intensive than that. It's interesting that this is the only place in the Old Testament where the words holy, holy, holy are said together in a trio.

And the only place in the New Testament is Revelation 4.8. What's interesting is in both cases it was spoken by an angelic being in heaven with six wings. It is like that being has that assignment. God is the ultimate and unmatched in His quality and magnitude of holiness. There is no other standard of holiness. He is the standard by which all holiness is compared. Then this term Lord of Hosts comes up. This name for the Lord never shows up in Genesis through Judges, not in any of the passages that we've been studying to date, until now.

But the prophets of the Old Testament use it very many times, starting in 1 Samuel and continuing through the rest of the Old Testament 230 times, almost 50 times in just the book of Isaiah. The Lord of hosts, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of hosts. One thing to remember is that prophets speak from and for God. They speak for God and they want people to understand who is the Lord. The Lord is the one who spells out who God is and what God is in charge of. So we have to look at this word, Lord of hosts. God is the creator of all the hosts of heaven. We're not talking about hosts and hostesses here, right?

What he's talking about is the great number of angelic beings. In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John, as he is brought on to the heavenly scene, somewhat like Isaiah is here. He describes the angels as myriads of myriads. Now myriad is 10,000 which is the largest number in the Greek numbering system. It was roughly equivalent to saying countless. So how does John describe the number of angels? Myriads of myriads. Countless numbers of countless numbers.

So when we say Lord of hosts, we're talking about the Lord who created and is Lord of this awesome number of angels. You look at it and just the number of them is phenomenal and they're not all made the same. And by the way, angels don't have family trees, right? God makes each one individually. So God has made these angels a variety different kinds of angels, different roles of angels in awesome number. He is the Lord and the creator of all of them. He has charge of all of them. He is the Lord of the awesome number of hosts, the awesome number of created angelic beings.

And now here's the picture painted in heaven now reference to the earth. The whole earth is full of his glory and certainly as we look here on this planet there are some pretty ugly things but there are also some glorious things. Have you seen them? This line is consistent with the full breadth of God's eternal purpose. What do I mean by God's eternal purpose? To declare and to reveal and to share His glory and so to be glorified forever and ever. Got that? To declare and reveal and to share His glory and so to be glorified forever and ever. And in that second verse, that's what we're saying about, too. He shares His glory with us. His glory, whether it's at an astronomical scale, at a scale we can relate to, His glory down to tiny details.

In Numbers 14.21, part of the passage in the law that we read about, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. Down at a microscopic scale, on to the grand astronomical scale. And one of the things we've been making clear in our elective that meets in this room right before the main service here, glory is the radiant essence of who God is. God's essence is not something dead and static. It is radiant. The radiant essence of who God is.

God's glory is not an optional extra. It is not the icing on the cake. If you go to order a car, you can order the car and then they have all these little optional items that you can order if you like and they charge a certain amount for each one and those optional items are kind of, well, that's beyond just a basic car. To the Lord, glory is not just an extra. It's who He is. It's the radiant essence of who He is. The whole earth has been made to express the radiant essence of who God is.

And then as the seraph spoke, it says, the foundations of the thresholds trembled. I wish I had a button on this thing to make this whole room shake. That would get the point across. Let's see, I can find, no, maybe not. Everything shook when this one seraph spoke. Everything. Just one seraph. Just one. The one seraph spoke these words and everything rocked.

The King James Version here is the post of the door which is actually quite literally the case. The Hebrew words here are indicating the massive stone gate and post construction that was used in city gates in those days. And what they would do is they would take a very large rock and put it in the ground and they would put a kind of indentation down in it and have a post that would sit down in that And that would be the pivot point for the gate. And the idea is everything was very solidly constructed. Obviously, when you have the gates closed, especially if it's in the instance of a military attack, you want something substantial.

And it's this very well-founded assembly that the seraph rocks and shakes with one voice. Everything rocks and shakes when this one seraph speaks. Here's Dr. Brian Wood. He's the one who's got his hand there in what is believed to be the gate socket at AI, which is what we studied this last week. It is awesome to think that this one creature, so this isn't a big chorus. This isn't even a trio or a duet. This is one creature. When he speaks, everything rocks.

Exodus 40, 34, and 35, and Revelation 15, 8 have something similar, and that is there's also the smoke coming from the temple. Here in the heavenly scene, yes. And I don't think there's any health warnings from the Surgeon General about it either. So what is the response of Isaiah to this?

Here he is seeing all this, hearing all this. He is overwhelmed. He is seeing God in his majestic and awesome character. He is seeing these beings that God has created that are not quite like anything else around. And when this being speaks, everything rocks.

So now, what's Isaiah's response to this overwhelming and awesome experience that he's having? He says, Woe is me, for I am ruined. This is the first thing that Isaiah actually observes about himself. After seeing what he sees here, he says, I'm ruined. Everything else has been about God and the seraphim and the seraph and what the seraph said. When Isaiah sees who he is compared to God, he's toast. He's toast.

Woe to me, for I am ruined." All the reading and the writing about the law and serving for years as God's mouthpiece had not prepared him for this moment. He could have said, I was not prepared for what I saw. And what I see is I do not even come close to measuring up. Isaiah is no match for God's absolute holiness. A holiness that is not just holy, but holy, holy, holy. A triple emphatic. He says, there's no way, I'm ruined, I'm undone.

Isaiah in the previous chapter, we hadn't touched on it, but I'll just tell you it had six woes in it. Now he applies the seventh woe to himself. Woe are the people of Judah. Woe for this, woe for that. Now the seventh applies to himself. Woe is me. I'm ruined. That Hebrew word translated ruin means to cut off or destroy. This is the end of me. As a matter of fact, we make this point. Isaiah is seeing himself in terminal trouble. He says, I'm over. I'm over. I do not match up to God's holiness. God's awesome, phenomenal, spectacular, majestic holiness. I don't even come close. I'm burnt toast.

He explains why in the next three lines, and really it's only the beginning of the list, but it's all it takes. He says, he himself is a person of unclean lips. He lives among people who have unclean lips. And all it takes, compared to God's holiness, is one word that defiles. Just one. Just one. Now we've seen this. Here's Isaiah. He is awestruck. He is overwhelmed. He figures he is done. He's done for here on the heavenly scene. Now we want to do some comparing. comparing of ourselves and the position we have.

Paul tells the believers in the church at Ephesus, and by the way this is the church, right? That they're even seated and enthroned with Christ. Where? In the same place that Isaiah just described. Christ who is himself seated at the right hand of God the Father. And does Paul say that just he is seated there? No. says that you and I as believers in Christ are seated there with Christ in the heavenlies. Seated in this place that overwhelmed Isaiah. Seated in this place where Isaiah thought that he's done, he's ruined.

He even tells them they have confident access to God the Father. He even says that the believers can approach God as Abba, This term Abba, we could compare it to Papa, a term of endearment. So unlike Isaiah, who looks at this heavenly scene and he figures, I'm ruined, I'm done, I'm toast, I'm cut off, it's the end of me. Unlike that, we come to the Father and say, Papa. You come running up to Him. What an amazing contrast! How astounding! To come up into the arms and the lap of this loving Father and say, Papa, what a contrast! This next slide has a set of contrasts.

Isaiah was not, we are. Isaiah was not in Christ. If anything, we could say he was baptized into Moses. He was under law as the reigning principle. Isaiah was not in Christ, we are. The word baptized, one of the ways it was used in New Testament times and before, was it would take a sword that was in process of being constructed, and get it white hot as hot as they could in the fire and then they would suddenly plunge the sword into cold water. It would get this hot as it hit the water and that would case harden the outside of the sword. So instead of having a sword with a blade that would just get nicked and nicked and nicked and dulled and misshapen, instead the blade was hard. And the blade resisted being changed and resisted being nicked and resisted being distorted.

The idea of something being baptized meant to be immersed so as to be radically and permanently changed. That is what we do when we have a baptism is we represent that immersion so as to be radically and permanently changed. Isaiah was concerned that he might die. As a matter of fact, when he said, I am ruined, he was actually making the declaration, yeah, I not just might die, I am going to die.

We who are in Christ already have. You don't have to worry about dying. You're already done with that. What do I mean by that? We have been identified with Christ and His death. That was Paul's point. We've been baptized into Christ, placed into Him, so that we now share His history. The first part of which is we have the history of Christ and His death. We share His history.

At times, As Nancy and I are counseling with people, we'll have people talk about, oh, I have this history and I have that history. Well, guess what? On an earthly sense, I guess I could say I've got this history and that history, too. But you know what?

What's going to make a difference, what's going to matter is the new history I have because I've been identified with Christ and His death. Don't worry about, I think I'm going to die. Forget it. Take it. On faith, you already have. It's already taken place. Don't worry about it. As a matter of fact, it's not only don't worry about it, but be glad about it. You've already died. That's already done.

That's the first part of your history, your new history in Christ. You died with Him. You were buried with Him. You were raised with Him. You were seated, ascended and seated with Him. You don't have to worry about, I'm going to die. You already have. And that's a good thing.

Isaiah was not seated in the heavenlies. You see, Paul doesn't say someday you're going to go to heaven and be seated. That's not what he says. He doesn't say, you know, you can look forward to that and someday you'll be in heaven. And, you know, you really can look forward to that. But that's not the seating he's talking about. He says, right now you are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. Okay? Isaiah was not.

He was a man, he says, I live among people with unclean lips and I have unclean lips. He related to things here on earth. We are people who are made to relate to things heavenly. Isaiah was sent back to live among his people, the people of Judah. Yeah, those people with the unclean lips that he talked about. He was sent back, if we were to read the rest of the chapter, commissioned to go back and speak to these people and to be among them. But we, we remain seated with Christ. He's the one to do the living and to go back among the people here.

You see, your job is done here. You're done. You're through. You've retired. Your job is done here. It's Christ's job to do the living here. You do your living up there. He does the living here. It's not your job to do the living here. That's not what God has in mind. That's why you've been seated with Christ in the heavenlies. The power and the glory and the holiness of the Lord as He was sitting on the throne, lofty and exalted as Isaiah described there, conveyed by the robe and the glory that filled the temple, then the smoke that was described there, the power, the glory, and the holiness.

He shares with us. He shares with us. Isaiah looked at it as this is a world and a place apart. For us, it's our home. We're in Him. We're seated with Him. We in the body of Christ, rather than seeing heaven as a place of our undoing, see it as the place of our heart's home. And the place where we have our citizenship by His doing. It's not our undoing, it's His doing. Rather than being aghast at having seen the Lord as Isaiah was, we are invited to behold the glory of the Lord even now, until that day. that we see Him. Do we look forward to being with the Lord in heaven and having a new body?

I don't know about you, but I could sure use a new one. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. But we don't wait until then. There will come a day when we will be with Him, 1 John 3, 2. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him. Isaiah saw the Lord and went, I'm toast. I'm done. There will come a day when we will see the Lord and we'll say, wow, the Lord has made me like Him. The Lord has made me like Him.

It won't be a, oh no, I'm way out of place. We will say, this is the place that God intended. We will not be the man of unclean lips, but we will be the one there like Christ as we see Him face to face. We will see Him just as He is, and we will be like Him. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at what you had Isaiah write in these verses, it is awesome to see what he describes the majesty of Isaiah's vision of you in the throne room. The immenseness of this one seraph just shaking the foundations of heaven.

And yet in the midst of that, for us it's home. It's the place where we have our citizenship. After a long journey, we will sometimes come home and lay ourselves down and kind of go, ah, and heave a sigh because we're home. And there will come a day when we will be home like that. We will heave a sigh and say, ah, home. This is where I belong. Thank you, Lord, for that hope. And we pray, Lord, that the day that we see you face to face might even be today. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.