GOD IN HIS GLORY

ISAIAH 6:5–8

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty”

(Isaiah 6:5).

We all have a tendency to dilute the biblical portrait of God. I believe the reason for this is that the holiness of God is traumatic to unholy people. We see this as we continue to study the vision in Isaiah 6.

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion. John Calvin spoke of “that dread and amazement with which, as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God.” What Calvin was saying is this: There is a pattern to human responses to the presence of God. The more righteous the person, the more he trembles when he enters the immediate presence of God.

Man before God

There was nothing cavalier or casual in the response of Habakkuk when he met the holy God. After God spoke to him directly (Habakkuk 2), the prophet’s response was “I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled” (Habakkuk 3:16). Just so, after Job heard the voice of God, he said, “I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).

Isaiah was about as righteous a man as you could find in the year of king Uzziah’s death. Yet the first thing he did when he encountered the holiness of God was cry out in terror, “Woe to me, for I am ruined!”

The oracle of woe

The prophets brought God’s message to the people, and such messages were either oracles of weal or oracles of woe. The oracle of weal, or well-being, began with the word “blessed,” while the oracle of woe began with the word “woe.” Jesus, in pronouncing judgment upon Israel, said “woe unto you” (Matthew 23). In fact, just as God’s holiness is thrice repeated for emphasis in Isaiah 6, so “woe” is tripled in Revelation 8:13.

Thus, what stands out in Isaiah 6:5 is that the first oracle pronounced by this righteous prophet is an oracle of woe against himself. When Isaiah saw God in His glory, he saw himself as he really was.

CORAM DEO

“Coram Deo” means “before the face of God.” When you go before God’s face in prayer, do you perceive His awesome holiness as you should? As your inflated view of self is diminished in His presence, are you, like Isaiah, moved first to repentance and then to praise?

thuesday

march