you Back wall, there it is. Can you turn it down a little bit? Okay. Anyway, sorry. That still feels incredibly loud, but if y'all like it, I'll just go with it. Before we start, I wanna open up in a word of prayer, and then we can get rolling. So let's pray. Most gracious Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you. Thank you for your love and your mercy. Thank you for this day. Thank you for the opportunity to come here and stand before your saints. Father, with a message that you've given me, you've given all of us, and with the message that you gave Isaiah years and years and years and years ago, We are unworthy, unworthy to stand in your presence and to hear such a powerful declaration from the angels that you are holy. But Lord, thank you that you've shown us that, not just from the mouth of the seraphim, Lord, but from every aspect of who you are. Be with us tonight. Soften our hearts to this text. Teach us what you may. May your will be done. Speak through me. Remove any essence of pride or arrogance, Father. Get me out of the way and let your word do its work. We love you and we will thank you for it. May all that we do be done for your glory through Christ. This is in his name I pray, amen. The death of any great leader brings sorrowful trauma to a nation. If we look back years in American history, the sorrow that came forth from John F. Kennedy's death. that such a sought-after man-of-the-people president would be so horribly taken from America and such a gruesome assassination. In that time, America, for a few months, was truly full of grief and heartache. That same feeling was true in 8th century Israel. In the eighth century, a young king ascended to the throne of Israel, or the throne of Judah. At the age of 16, this king, or he ascended, I'm sorry, he ascended at the age of 16, and the king ruled for 52 years. That's over half a century that this man held the throne. And by no means was he the best or the greatest king of Judah, but In my opinion, and I believe that I would be backed by many other scholars, this king was very high up on the list, maybe the top five, if you will. This king was the King Uzziah, and what he accomplished in his reign, according to Dr. R.C. Sproul, was to bring the last significant spiritual reform to the people of the land. Because it is from that point on that there's some form of a turning point, some form of a spiritual decline in the life of Israel. And it's only four years later, and I believe that this plays into this situation by the sovereignty of God. I believe that God chose this to be the case, almost as a sign to defend this truth. It was only four years after the great King Uzziah's death, the city of Rome was established. But the death of King Uzziah was not in vain because it marked the beginning of the divine vocational ministry of the prophet who spoke of the coming Messiah, just a few chapters later, as a matter of fact, who prophesied of the Messiah coming and taking away the sins of sinful man, to be born of a virgin, to die a criminal's death. This prophet is the prophet Isaiah, and the account of his calling is absolutely majestic. And it draws us to the people of it draws the people of God to their knees as it did Isaiah. So let's look at this account in the sixth chapter of Isaiah, beginning in verse one. So if you'll join me there as I read verses one through four. A side note, and it's always a toss-up, because I haven't preached for enough years to really know how long one of my Bible studies is gonna go. I have four verses, so it could either be, I was telling them a minute ago, it could either be 30 minutes, or it could be an hour, hopefully. It'll be about 45 minutes. You should go with me. If it starts getting late, one of our gentlemen give me the old, the old clock, the watch tap brother Ronnie said he's got me. So let's read these verses. In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted with the train of his robe filling the temple. One called out to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts or the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory and the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out while the temple was filling with smoke. Isaiah begins this passage by giving context to when and where this account took place, which obviously we know as a Bible, believing in a Bible teaching church, the context is vital, absolutely important to any passage. It's clearly said that this happened in the year that the king died, the king Uzziah, which is set to be around 740. A lot of people go 742 and like 739. I like to land the plane somewhere around 740 BC. Knowing that, there's much debate on whether or not what Isaiah saw was a vision in the earthly temple of God. What Isaiah saw was him wandering around and he came upon the temple. Right? People believe that what he saw was God reigning in the temple. There's much debate on whether he saw that or what Isaiah truly saw was a glimpse into the inner sanctum of heaven itself, into the true heavenly throne room of the Most High, just as John did on the island of Patmos. And we have record that Paul himself went and saw the third heaven. For a few technical reasons, I prefer the latter. That what Isaiah truly saw was not merely a vision of God ruling here in the earthly temple. Rather, I believe that he saw the majesty of God reigning upon his heavenly throne. If you look closely at the spelling in this verse, he says, in the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne. If you look closely at the spelling in the verse, you will notice the word Lord, and it is spelt with a capital L and the rest lowercase. I wanna camp here for a moment because I believe that this is essential to who Isaiah was truly seeing. And if it is not that important to this text, it will at least set a foundation for you to understand the differentiation of the word Lord with capital L, capital O, capital R, and capital D versus capital L, the rest lowercase. So throughout the Bible, there are two ways to spell this word. One is as you see it in this verse, and the other way is, like I said, in all caps. When the word Lord is spelled capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, what we're truly seeing in the Hebrew is the word Yahweh. That is the word that God gave him, the name that God gave himself in the Midianite wilderness to Moses at the burning bush, when he said, I am that I am, the word Yahweh. This is what is known in the Hebrew history, in Israel's history, as the sacred name of God. Now, when we see the word capital L, lowercase o, lowercase r, yes, lowercase o, lowercase r, and lowercase d, as we do in this text, we can be confident that what we're seeing is a completely different word in Hebrew. It's not a spelling error or an error in the English, because the only way we could find, besides using the Hebrew words, is to do the capitalization different. What we're seeing in the Hebrew language is the word Adonai, which is the sacred name, or I'm sorry, it's the most exalted name of God, and it literally means sovereign one. A perfect example of this is found in Psalm 110. I'm sure some of you are familiar with this. Verse one, you don't have to flip through, I'll read it for you. It says, the Lord, Yahweh, said to my Lord, Adonai. It said, the Yahweh says to my Adonai, sit at my right hand as I make your enemies for you a footstool under your feet. So now I ask, who did Isaiah see sitting upon the heavenly throne? Well, John chapter 12, verse 41 gives us the absolute answer. Isaiah saw when he looked, when the curtain of heaven was peeled back. And when he was given by God's divine sovereignty, a glimpse, just for a moment, into the inner sanctum of the highest of heavens, what Isaiah saw, he didn't see King David or King Solomon. He didn't see King Asa, King Jehoshaphat. He didn't even see King Uzziah, the king that has just died. What Isaiah saw, according to scripture, was the pre-incarnate glimpse of the enthronement of Jesus Christ himself. Isaiah describes, then he goes on to describe seeing the Lord as high and exalted. So this is vital to our view of God, absolutely. It's not just important, it is a necessity to our view of God. When Isaiah imagines the holiness of God, he doesn't think of the sinlessness of Christ merely, though the sinlessness of Christ and the sinlessness of God is absolutely vital to Christianity. And to us, the sinners. Because Christ and God's sinlessness is the only reason or it's an essential reason that we can be saved and sanctified because we know that he is without sin, without blemish. On the contrary, when we see and when we ponder the idea of the holiness of God, when we see God, we see Him as we look and we imagine the majestic transcendence of God, right? I know that Pastor Nathan spoke on this, I don't know for how long, but last week, I wasn't here. Regretfully, I heard it was an awesome sermon. But Isaiah, when he sees the holiness of God, sees the transcendence of God, he sees the separateness of God. He sees that God is not of this earth. He sees how high and sovereign and awesome God is. And different, how different God is from us. When we speak of how holy our God is, Again, I say we speak not of his sinlessness, though that is more than necessary. We speak of his high position. which if you've studied the book of Isaiah or you read the book of Isaiah, is how Isaiah continually sees the Lord. And when he thinks of the Lord, when he ponders the Lord, that's how he describes him in multiple other passages. When I spoke on Isaiah 40, that was a theme, how God is so outside of this world, how this world is like just the drop on the side of a pail of water to God. Isaiah also makes a note of the length of the train of God's garment. with the train of his robe filling the temple, as he said. Because in ancient times, the length of the robe of a king or of just anyone in the government, of a statesman, anyone, the length of their robe was a measure of their greatness. So when Isaiah is seeing, he's not just saying how beautiful God's robe was, what Isaiah is saying, and it made perfect sense to the people in this time. That's why it's so important to study and study and study context and history. What Isaiah was describing was not just how pretty it was, how beautiful his robe was, Isaiah was describing how God's greatness filled the throne room, top to bottom, and how this billowing garment could not be contained by the floor of this temple. In other words, God's greatness could not be contained. We go on to verse two. This is such an awesome verse, there's so much to unpack, and this is where I feel like I might get slowed down, so I'm gonna have to move. Seraphim stood above him, each having six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. This is the only reference in scripture, and a lot of people misunderstand, This is the only reference in the Word of God to these heavenly beings. This is the only place where we can truly go to study the seraphim. The cherubim are talked, or the cherubs are talked much in other parts, other books, so many times. We're told very little about them, yet based on what we're told in these couple of verses, we know that they are tasked with being the daily and eternal that they are tasked with the daily and eternal praise of God in his immediate presence. If we look closely at this verse, we see these seraphim appear in quite an interesting fashion, because they have six wings, not just two. Okay, so let me ask a question, and I want you to answer out loud, it's not rhetorical. I know it's obviously a silly question, but still, it'll help us to think. Is God truly sovereign? Yes, okay. So that we know that every creature that God makes, every being, whether in the image of a God, as we are as humans, or heavenly creatures, or animals, every creature that God makes, he makes with such a creative process to be suitable for their specific environment, right? For example, birds have feathers and wings so that they can glide through the air virtually effortlessly so that they won't fall. And I was just talking with my dad about this the other day. I'm not gonna go so quiet into the illustration I wanted to use. But squirrels are so light and they're so flexible that they can fall from a very, very high point. to which when they land on the ground, they can extend their legs and catch themselves without dying, right? God even made squirrels so perfectly. He made them with legs that could stretch so far and fan themselves out to when they would land, they would land without injury. So when we look at the seraphim, we notice that they have two extra sets of wings. And this is not done in vain. This is done with purpose. So knowing that, we have to dig a little deeper here. I'm going to bring us to a couple extra or a couple other texts so we can study this and ponder this. What they're doing and why it's so significant to the text. So God being completely sovereign and having an intricate plan for the creation of these angelic being knows fully that they would be in the presence of God for eternity. Worshiping, crying out the holiness of God to his raw and entire majesty. He made this seraphim with wings to cover their face because not even these divine and awesome angelic beings could stand to look at this, the raw glory of our God. Not even the angels, they had to cover themselves. It says, with two he covered his face. God's glory is too bright for the seraphim to handle, so they must shield their face. It was not something that was done for any flippant reason. It's because they could not handle to look, they could not bear to look at the majesty of God and his entire essence. This truth brings me to the story of Moses on the mountain with God in Exodus 33. If you could please turn there with me for a brief moment as I read this account. If I can find it, there we go. Exodus 33, starting in verse 18. Then Moses said, I pray you, show me your glory. And he said. This is God speaking, I myself will make my goodness pass before you and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. But he said, you cannot see my face. For no man can see my face and live. Then the Lord said, behold, there is a place. By me, you shall stand there on the rock, And it will come about while my glorious passing by. That I will put you in the cleft of the rock. And cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will make or then I will take my hand away and you shall see my back with my face shall not be seen. So to paraphrase. Pastor Jim always talks about Thompson translation. We'll go to Mr. We'll go to Jeffers translation for a moment. Moses is on the mountain, and he's receiving the law. And he says, now bear with me, this is for the sake of illustration. He says, Lord, I've seen what you've done for us. All of my life, I've seen your works. I've seen a sea split in half, and many people A whole nation of people pass through on dry land. I've seen all your works, so now let me see your face." And God says, Moses, it has been said that no man will see my face and live. So what does God do in his infinite grace and mercy? Because this was a gift to Moses. He said, there's a rock on the mountain. I will cut out for you a niche and you will hide yourself from the cleft of the rock. And I will pass by, I will shield you with my hand while I face you. But when I turn from you, I will remove my hand and you will look at me passing by from the cleft of the rock with a partial view of my backside. In the Hebrew, it literally translates to hindquarters. So he did. God, Moses got to look at just a split, small image of God's glory. So we go down. This is where it really, where the point is really to be made. We go down to chapter 34 of Exodus. We get to look at the reaction of the people when they saw Moses's face. Chapter four, chapter four, verse 29 to 33. It came about when Moses was coming down from the Mount Sinai, where the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses' hands as he was coming down from the mountain, that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with him, with God. So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. Then Moses called to them and Aaron and all of the rulers in the congregation and returned to him. And Moses spoke to them. Afterwards, all the sons of Israel came near and he commanded them to do everything the Lord had spoken to him on Mount Sinai. And when Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. This man, Moses, saw a backwards glimpse of God, just a fraction of the backwards view from behind a rock on a cloudy mountain of just a split image of God. And from that, when he descended the mountain and he came down and the people of Israel started to approach him, they had to shield their face. They said, Moses, cover your face. They were scared. because Moses, his face was shining. I imagine Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration as his face shone. I'm sure Moses' face was not a fraction of that, but just imagine his face was so bright they couldn't bear to look at him. That is the reason that the seraphim had to shield their face because God's glory, his holiness is too large, too vast for us to see, for even the angels to see. If Moses saw any more, I am so convinced that if Moses saw any more, if there was just another six inches cut off from the rock, if Moses saw even a glimpse more of God's glory, I am sure that Moses would have fell dead on that mountain because it was too much for him to bear. We're also told that the angels covered their feet before God. So the question must be asked, why did the angels cover their feet in the presence of God? I don't think it is for such a drastic reason as their faith, because they couldn't bear. I think the reason they covered their feet is out of a sign of humility and reverence to God. We think, I'm not going to go there for the sake of time. Our minds go back, like I said, to Moses in the Midianite wilderness at the burning bush. We remember what God said. He said, Moses, take off your shoes for the ground on which you stand is holy ground. You see, Moses was told to take off of his shoes because our feet are a sign of our creatureliness, right? So as Dr. R.C. Sproul says, even in heaven, the angels had to cover the sign of their creatureliness, right? out of a sign of humility and reverence, covered their feet because they were not worthy even to be in the presence of God. We move on. We'll go to verse three of Isaiah six. We can go back to Isaiah six. This is the crescendo of these verses. This is the part that we're all here for. He says, And one called out to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The angels, it says the angels called out. One called out to another. They were stating to one another, but they weren't just saying it. They weren't just calling out and saying, holy, holy, holy. It literally, in the Hebrew, literally means to shout, to cry. I think a lot of other translations say they cried out. It was with zeal and fervor that these angels declared the holiness of our great God. From the depths of their beings, they cried that God is. Holy. We see something in this passage that's easy to miss as English speakers, and I'm sure we all know about verbal repetition in Hebrew and the Hebrew language. But as a matter of fact, we could read over this a hundred times and miss it. In the English language, if we're trying to bring great attention to something that we're saying or something we're writing, so if we're saying it, we'll say it louder, like I've done a few times. or maybe we'll slow it down and really put emphasis, heavy emphasis on what we're saying, slow it down. If we're writing something, we'll add an exclamation point, we'll underline it, we'll write it bold, we'll italicize it even. But in Hebrew, in ancient Hebrew, what they would do to bring emphasis to something, they did all of those things, but they also, the biggest tool that they used to draw attention to what they were writing was verbal repetition. My mind is drawn back to Genesis 2, verse 17, when God tells Adam that if he eats of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he will surely die. As a matter of fact, in the Hebrew, God did not say you will surely die. What he said, because it sounds weird in the English, so they said surely instead of this, God said was literally you will die Die. That's what he told Adam. That's what was written by Moses. God didn't say, I'm sure you will die, or truly you will die. He said, you will die, die, if you betray me. Even Jesus was fond of using this verbal repetition in his teachings. And don't misunderstand me, every word that proceeded that came out of the mouth of Christ was of utmost importance. This is our God speaking to us. But even he used this method because he was a teacher. He was a rabbi. His disciples, they were his students. Even he used this. We think of all the times that he would say, truly, truly, I say unto you, or verily, verily. What he was saying, literally then, he would say, amen, amen. Or as we know in English, all God's people said, amen. That's what Christ would say. He would add that repetition to say, what I'm about to tell you is of highest importance. So listen. Now we must understand the importance of this threefold repetition given by the seraphim. We're not told that God is nowhere in scripture. We're told that God is mercy, mercy, mercy, or love, love, love, or even truth, truth, truth, though we know that God is mercy, that God is love, and that God is truth. It would not be enough for the angels to cry out that God is holy. It would not be enough for the angels to say, holy is the Lord of hosts, or even to say, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. But what the angels cried out in the superlative degree, in the highest, they brought it to the highest form of degree. is that God is holy, holy, holy. There's no attribute of God raised to such a high degree. God's holiness is of the highest importance because this attribute, this characteristic of God absolutely wraps itself around him and consumes his person. God is holy, holy, holy. What we see next is absolutely a supernatural phenomenon. After this decree, this emotional, zealous, and fervent cry was given from one angel to another, after it was declared We read that in verse four, the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, meaning the angels, while the temple was filling with smoke. The dead and the lifeless, inanimate, hearts of this temple, at the sound of this great call and this wonderful cry, they were moved and they trembled with fear by the message of God's great holiness. The foundations, the strongest and most relied upon parts of this room, trembled at the sound of the voices of the angels. The angels cried out with such a powerful fervor that smoke billowed forth from their mouths and filled the room. And even the lifeless parts of the temple had sense enough to be moved and moved so intensely by the majesty of God. How could we Let's pause here for a minute, folks. Hear me, please. How could we, men and women, made in his image, crafted by his hands in our mother's womb, before the foundations of the earth, we, as these beings that he made different than the angels because he loves us, so much with a love that we can't understand because it's a sovereign love, and we are not sovereign. How could we neglect to also tremble at his majesty? How could we be so apathetic to His glory? We live our lives every day, and we know the truth of Scripture, but we live our lives and we go about playing our little games, doing all these silly little things, which in, what, 50 years, 80 years, will mean nothing to anyone. We go about, we do all these things, and I'm not just preaching to you all, I'm preaching to myself. I've been telling Pastor Nathan, I chose this passage a few weeks ago, but I'm glad that I'm getting to preach it now, so that I can take a little break from it, because it has wrecked my heart over the last few weeks, and I'm not perfect. But do you hear me, that we live, image bearers of God, we live these lives so apathetic to God's greatness, and we spit in the face of the majesty of God every day. Distracting us from God's greatness. So, my challenge to you, Go home tonight. Don't wait for tomorrow. If you have the time, which you do, go home tonight. Open your scriptures to Isaiah chapter six and put it in front of your face. Use it as a mirror. and submit your heart to God's greatness. Use it as a mirror, as the book of James says, right? We're so often so inclined to be hearers, to hear the message of God's holiness and just let it go. Use this passage as a mirror, put it in front of your face and let it break you for God's holiness, because it is God's holiness that is raised to the highest degree. Not God's sovereignty, no. God's sovereignty, you've heard me speak on God's sovereignty. It is His attribute that up until now, I mean, it just, it consumed me. I love to set my mind on the sovereignty of God, to think about how He intricately made everything that He made, and how He made you and me, and how He planned salvation. But it's the holiness of God that was raised to the nth degree, to the highest degree, So we must see that, we must not just see it, we must live that out, that God, we serve a holy God. I think of the fear of the Lord and how it affects God's people. I think of the women in Exodus, I wanna say chapter one, the midwives in Exodus chapter one. When the decree was given by Pharaoh, they worked in such a way, they did their work in such a way where they protected the lives of the newborns. And it says, because they feared the Lord. We serve a God that is holy enough, not just a little separate, not just sinless. We serve a God who is so holy that he demands our fear. We're told in the scripture, You're gonna have to forgive me. I wanna say it's in the book of Jeremiah. I'm probably wrong. I wish I would've written it down. God says, I will make for myself a people and they will fear me because of my greatness. So my challenge to you, like I said, go home, put this scripture in front of your face and use it as a mirror to ask yourself the question, do I truly see God as holy? And your heart's gonna go, of course. Of course God is holy. That's all Willis said for 45 minutes tonight. Of course God's holy. Then ask yourself, if I really believe that, how do I live that? Because what you think, what you believe, it's nothing without action. We say we believe one thing. If we're not living that out, ladies and gentlemen, we don't believe that. Not enough to live it out. So my prayer for you is that you will, our church, the saints of God, the called of God, will use this verse, use this passage as a mirror to our hearts And hear the Lord cry out that I am holy. Hear the angels cry out that he is holy and that our hearts will cry out. He is holy. We serve a holy, holy, holy God. And I know I said earlier, not just a holy God, not just a holy, holy God. Now those things. That would be awesome, but it's not enough. Even, I've heard it said before and now it bothers me. Our language, no language on earth is good enough to truly magnify the greatness of God. No words that we can say, we can't conjure up enough good words. I mean, I can open, I can open the scripture and I can read these words, but these words are not even good enough to truly raised to the highest degree, God's greatness. Because we speak a language of broken people. I would love to come back, I would love to teach on Isaiah's reaction. The trauma of Isaiah's reaction, if you read the next verse. He says, woe is me, for I am ruined. Some translations say, I am undone. I've been shattered. because I'm a man of unclean lips and a nation of unclean lips. And for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Brothers and sisters, as we leave tonight, your eyes shall see the King, the Lord Almighty. We can't in this life know and truly understand who God is, right? It's said in scripture, we can't truly understand God. No one can understand the mind of God. That's why I so long and so look forward to the day that I'll even get to be one step closer to seeing God's majesty. As Moses cried to God, please let me see you. In a time of wickedness and accepted evil in this nation and in our world and sometimes in our lives, we must wrap our hearts up with this passage and use it to be broken daily by the holiness of God. So my prayer for you and for myself is that we all would truly know who our God is, not just by reading, but we would know by the way that we live it out, we would know by breaking ourselves away for a moment in prayer to God, we would go to our closets and we would pray, we would be broken, we would be undone by God's holiness, and that we would be genuinely affected by it. I ask you, who do we serve in the song of the ages? from eternity past to eternity future. We serve a God who is holy, holy, holy, and he is holy alone. Let's pray. Our most gracious heavenly King, thank you for your holiness. Thank you for your mercy and your grace. Oh, thank you for your mercy and your grace. Because without it, we would be without hope. Because we as a people could not stand before your heavenly throne and look upon your holiness without being shattered into a billion pieces and thrown into the lake of fire. So thank you that you're a merciful and gracious God be with us tonight as we depart from here. I pray for safe travels for those leaving and heading home. Thank you, Lord.