Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The seraphim, creatures created by God with six wings. With two wings, they covered their face. With two wings they covered their feet, and with two wings they flew. Why did they cover their face? Well, you see, the purpose and the function for which these creatures were made was to serve in the immediate presence of God.
I can still remember the first time I heard R.C. Sproul teach on the seraphim from Isaiah 6 and the way that helped me to see the otherness, the holiness of God. So I encourage you to keep listening today as Dr. Sproul will be walking us through that section of Isaiah.
Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and this is the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind, the daily discipleship podcast of Ligonier Ministries. Ligonier exists to proclaim, teach, and defend the holiness of God in all its fullness to as many people as possible. When you hear R.C. Sproul teach on the holiness of God, it becomes so clear why that is the mission he gave us here at Ligonier.
People need to know who God is, and by God's grace, they need to know who they are and their need for a Savior. Well, when you support this mission with a donation, you'll receive lifetime digital access to the Holiness of God series, the Holiness of God extended edition, a study guide, and we'll send you a 40th anniversary edition of the Holiness of God, the book.
Simply give your gift at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight, and this special resource bundle will be yours. Well, here's R.C. Sproul on the vision of God recorded for us in Isaiah chapter 6.
We turn once again to the experience that is recorded by the prophet Isaiah in which he speaks of the circumstances of his call, of his moment of consecration to this divine task that God laid upon him.
We recall that Isaiah begins his testimony by giving us the historical setting, saying that it was in the year that King Uzziah died, a year when a ruler who had reigned for 52 years had passed from the scene, leaving the people of the land in a sense of fear and uncertainty. This was an epic moment in the time of Israel.
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Chapter 2: What vision did Isaiah see that changed his life?
He says, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on the throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. It's significant that when Isaiah speaks of this visionary experience, he says, I saw something. I didn't just hear something. I didn't just imagine something. I didn't just read about something. I saw something. I saw the Lord.
And I saw the Lord in a specific context. I saw him enthroned. I saw him occupying the seat of cosmic authority. John tells us in the New Testament that the vision that Isaiah had was not a vision of God the Father, but it was a vision of the heavenly presence long before the incarnation. It was a vision of the heavenly presence of the exalted second person of the Trinity.
Before Mary bore the child, before Simeon held him up and declared that he was witnessing now in the flesh the consolation of Israel, Isaiah was privileged to peek behind the veil, to look behind the curtain of God's destiny and God's plan for history, to see seated in heaven, in the heavenly Jerusalem, in the heavenly temple, the King of the kings, the Lord of the lords.
He said, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. If you look in your Bible, you'll see that that word Lord is printed with this manner. It's capital L, little o, little r, little d. Now, if you look in your scriptures and move down, to verse 3, where we read, Holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
You see the word Lord there appears in all capital letters, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. It's not because the printer has made a mistake here.
The reason why one is in all uppercase letters and the other one is in lowercase letters is to give us a clue from the printer of the English edition of the Bible that even though the same English word Lord appears both in verse 1 and in verse 3, there are different Hebrew words that are being translated.
Whenever you see the word Lord, all in capital letters, you can assume that in the Hebrew text, what is found there is the sacred name of God, Yahweh. But when we see Lord in lowercase letters, as we do here in verse 1, the Hebrew behind it is the Hebrew word Adonai. which means simply the sovereign one, the one who is vested with absolute authority.
In fact, the title Adonai is higher than the title king, because even the king in Israel was subject to Adonai, to the sovereign God of heaven and earth. who raises up kings and who brings down kings. And now the year that this most popular king, Uzziah, had died and the vacuum set in in the nation, Isaiah sees the Lord. He sees Adonai.
He sees a vision of the one who is absolutely sovereign, and he sees him in his investiture. He sees him after his coronation. He sees him occupying the throne high and lifted up. Images of exaltation. Images that bespeak the glory of God, the glory of the Lord's anointed, the glory of Christ. So it's in this context that he has this vision in the inner chambers of heaven itself.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of King Uzziah's death in Isaiah's calling?
And I will come over here and I will carve out a hollow space in the rock. And I will place you in that niche in the rock. And I will allow my glory to pass by. But I will cover you and I will allow you to see in literally what it says in the Hebrew, the hind quarters or the backward parts of Yahweh. But Moses, my face shall not be seen. For no man can see God and live.
It's not because he's invisible that we can't see him. It's not because there's a deficiency with our eyes. It's because there's a deficiency in our character. There's a deficiency in our heart. We are not pure in heart. And because of sin, we are not allowed to gaze on the unveiled presence of God. Well, I'm not suggesting that the seraphim were fallen creatures, that they were sinners.
But even these unfallen, spotless creatures, heavenly beings are equipped to shield their eyes from the blazing, burning glory of God. Think of it. Even the angels must shield their eyes from the light that is brighter than the noonday sun. And they are given two more wings to cover their feet. Why?
Again, Moses, when he entered into the presence of God, when God appeared to him in the Midianite wilderness and spoke to him from the burning bush, said to him, Moses, Moses, put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground. It wasn't holy because Moses was there. It was holy because God was there.
And our feet are the feet of creatures, feet of clay, and our feet indicate our being bound to earth. And Moses is called to take off his shoes, a symbolic gesture to acknowledge that now he, as a creature, stands in the presence of Almighty God. Even the angels, whose natural habitat is heaven itself, are creatures.
And when they come into the presence of God, they must cover the sign of their creaturehood. They cover their eyes to shield them from the blazing glory. They cover the feet to acknowledge in humility they are creatures before the living God. But beloved, the purpose of this description of the seraphim
is not to tell us so much about their anatomy, but rather to tell us of their task to give us a message of the nature of God. That's the heart of this experience where the angels cry an antiphonal response one to another daily in the presence of God, holy, holy, holy. I want us to think
about some of the words that we choose in our language to express things that we consider extraordinary or wonderful or great, words that are used so often that they become for a while the catchwords, the buzzwords of a generation until they simply die, the death of triteness and staleness, words like in the 40s that became popular, like swell. And then in the 50s, it was the word cool.
And it seems like every generation has one of those words, doesn't it? Today, I think the stale word of the decade is the word awesome. When we see the Michael Jordans of this world perform in uncommon greatness, we say he's awesome. We hear a remarkably gifted singer and say she or he is awesome. If ever a word was misused, it is the word awesome.
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