Divine Sovereignty Amidst Earthly Power: Isaiah's Vision

Last summer I had the opportunity to visit Rome, the eternal city, to visit all the historic sites and the thing that stood out to me most dramatically was the mixture of the monuments. On the one hand you had all of the historical monuments to the secular power of the Roman Empire. And then on the other hand you had all of those monuments that recorded for us the initial days of the Christian Church. [00:00:07]

And it was like an exercise in contrasts where we see an intersection -- no, not just an intersection -- a collision between the secular forces of this world and the things of God. And I think the most dramatic moment for me in my visit to Rome was in looking at the Roman Forum, the ruins of the Roman Forum, where the senate sat and met to decide the policies of the Roman Empire. [00:00:42]

And I noticed that all of the tourists were busy looking at the Forum and nobody was crowding around this place where I wanted to visit. But in that hole in the ground, in that cistern, was the place where the Apostle Paul was held prisoner while he was awaiting his execution from Nero. I thought, "I'm standing in the place here where Paul was in chains and where Paul -- who doesn't have a monument to him here in the Forum -- represented something that far outlasted the power of Imperial Rome." [00:01:42]

And the record for that we find in the book of Isaiah in the sixth chapter where he tells us what happened on that occasion. We read "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up and the train of His robe filled the temple." Now he notes that . . . uh . . . this experience that he had took place when a particular king in the year that king died. [00:03:06]

And when God created a nation -- His nation -- and gave His law to His people, He had the normal laws against killing and against stealing and that sort of thing, but included in the top ten laws was this law, "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain." In the New Testament the disciples come to Jesus and they say, "Lord, teach us how to pray." [00:06:32]

Jesus is saying when you pray the first thing you should pray for is that the name of My Father be treated with reverence; that it be regarded as holy, because indeed holy is His name. That's the capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Yahweh. The sacred name that before we even mention the name of God, we should pause and only speak of it with reverence. [00:07:38]

And normally when you see that title in the English language, what lies behind it in the Hebrew text is some form of the Hebrew word "adon" -- Adonai. Now the Old Testament Jews had a whole list of titles that they used for God. God was the king, He was this, He was that. And yet the favorite title that was reserved for God in the Old Testament was this title "Adonai." [00:09:14]

And humanly speaking, it was Uzziah who was the sovereign in Israel. But he's dead! And now Isaiah gets to look beyond the veil and gets a vision into the inner chamber of Heaven itself and he doesn't see Uzziah. What does he see? He sees Adonai -- high and exalted -- lifted up there in His heavenly throne. And we read in the text that he says, "and the train of His robe filled the temple." [00:10:37]

Now Isaiah gives us a graphic description of these angelic beings whose specific task is to minister in the presence of God in Heaven. Now he describes them in somewhat bizarre terms -- that these Heavenly creatures have six wings! And these wings have specific functions. You know that when God makes creatures, He designs them according to . . . uh . . . the equipment that they need for their environment. [00:11:52]

And we are saying . . . listen to what . . . what . . . how Isaiah describes it. He said, "And one cried to another and said, 'Holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.'" So that the angels now in the presence of God are singing in antiphonal response back and forth to one another "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts. The whole world is filled with His glory." [00:18:23]

You see the angels do not say here that God is holy. And they're not satisfied to say that God is holy, holy. But their message is that He is holy, holy, holy. This is the only time in all of the Bible that an attribute of God is elevated to the third degree -- elevated to the superlative level. The Bible doesn't say that God is love, love, love or justice, justice, justice or mercy, mercy, mercy, but that He is holy, holy, holy. [00:22:25]

Here's the point: Isaiah never, ever, ever knew who Isaiah was until he found out who God was. And we don't really know who we are until we find out who God is. And when we do find out who God is, we see the glaring difference between His holiness and our corruption. That's what the message of Scripture is all about and how God addresses that gap between who He is and who we are. [00:24:36]