"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. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he
covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one
cried to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole
earth is full of His glory!" And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice
of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said: "Woe is
me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the
midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
hosts." Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal
which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with
it, and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away,
and your sin purged." Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: "Whom shall I
send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me." And He said,
"Go, and tell this people: Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on
seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears
heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their
ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed." (Isaiah
6:1-10).
"I have... appointed the ordinances of
heaven" (Jer. 33:25).
Standing back for a moment from any particular
portion of the Word of God, and taking into consideration its whole tenor and
teaching, there is one thing with which we find ourselves, and that is this:
that if we are to have God in fulness, with all that that means, we must have
that which God has revealed as His mind. That is a very general statement, but
also it is particular. We must provide God with that which He has prescribed as
His basis and His means for the expression of Himself in fulness. If we only
give God parts of what He has shown to be His requirement, we only have God in
that measure. Every increase of the Lord will come along the line of His being
given what He has indicated as the thing that He requires. Fulness of divine
life and light and glory and riches moves along divinely appointed ways, and we
cannot have that fulness in any other way.
Paul was instrumental in bringing in a full
revelation as to God's eternal counsels, and in connection with that revelation
we find ourselves in the presence of a greater fulness of the Lord than anywhere
else. No one will question that, when you come to Paul's written ministry, you
are in the presence of vastness, fulness, depth. The measure of things has been
immensely expanded in all directions. There is still plenty of room to move
about in where Paul is concerned that we have not yet touched.
But what we must recognise - and this is the
point for the moment - is that that fulness has come along certain clearly
defined lines in relation to certain specified things, and it would not come
otherwise, it could not come otherwise. God's means are indispensable to God's
ends. Isaiah 6 brings to us remarkably and strikingly the four major factors in
divine revelation related to the full committal of Himself on the part of God;
they are clearly marked. Two of them are mentioned in verse 1 — "I saw the
Lord sitting upon a throne … His train filled the temple." In verse 5 we
have what the first of those means - "My eyes have seen the King." Put
the Throne and the King together, they are one thing. The Throne, the Temple.
Verse 6, "having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs
from off the altar". Then in verse 8, "I heard the voice of the Lord,
saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I; send
me." The four major factors of divine revelation are the Throne, the Temple,
the Altar and the Ministry, ministry of course of this kind, and they relate
inseparably to divine fulness.
Just by way of indicating, before we speak more
specifically of these four things, the sovereignty of God operates in relation
to one thing, one supreme and ultimate object and end: that is the fulness of
Christ, "...according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him unto a
dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ"
(Eph. 1:9-10). The divine sovereignty operates in many ways, and it would be a
fascinating half an hour even to look at the many ways clearly defined along
which the sovereignty of God moves, but whatever the ways of that sovereignty,
however many and diverse, the goal and object is one; what Paul calls "the
eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph. 3:11).
Divine sovereignty, then, is moving to that end, and now because in the case of
Israel the divine end is challenged, the state of the people generally makes it
impossible for God to move through them toward that end. He acts sovereignly,
and this is a sovereign ministry through Isaiah of blinding and deafening and
hardening in order to secure that people from amongst them who will see and do
see and hear and understand and embody the Lord's full thought. It is
sovereignty operating toward God's end to have a people, and when that end, that
wonderful end, the divine fulness in a people, is brought into view, these four
things are set forth and laid down as basic and fundamental: the throne, the
temple, the altar and the ministry. As we look at them separately, we shall see,
I think, how that is.
The Throne
The first, the Throne - and it is always the
first; the King. "My eyes have seen the King." "I saw the Lord sitting upon a
throne." When God is moving in relation to fulness, that is the first thing
always. Take the book of the Acts. What is the first thing in relation to
spiritual fulness? It is the Lord Jesus exalted, on the Throne. That is their
message, that is the beginning of everything. "God highly exalted Him, and
gave unto him the name which is above every name" (Phil. 2:9). "He raised
Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that
is named" (Eph. 1:20,21). That is where the church takes its rise. It is
from that point that everything begins - the absolute and unquestioned
sovereignty of the Lord Jesus where those are concerned who are brought into the
eternal counsels, the eternal purpose.
Among the various designations which the
apostle Paul (the apostle of spiritual fulness) took for himself, was the
designation 'herald'. The word is not so translated in our versions,
unfortunately, but wherever you find the word 'preacher' or 'preaching' or
'preached' you have in the original the word 'herald', 'heralding'. Paul
actually called himself that in both of his letters to Timothy, once in each.
"I was appointed a herald" (1 Tim. 2:7); "Whereunto I was appointed a
herald" (2 Tim. 1:11). Our version is 'a preacher', and the original idea of
the herald was one who was called upon to make an official proclamation. He
might be sent by the king to make a royal proclamation, or by a prince or by a
magistrate or by a military governor, but it was an official proclamation he was
called upon to make. Paul used that word in 2 Cor. 4:5: "We preach not
ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord", "we herald Christ Jesus as Lord", "we
make the proclamation that Christ Jesus is Lord", and the herald made his
proclamation, and he did not ask anybody if they would accept what he announced;
he did not make it optional at all. You can do what you like about it. You have
to recognise this fact. What you do is your responsibility. This is God's fact.
"God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified"
(Acts 2:36).
All that is meant by Christ as absolute Lord in
the appointment of God, in Headship, the Head of every man, the Head of the
creation, and Head over all things to the church - all that which we have not
yet ranged and understood, but all that that means of the perfect Headship,
sovereign Lordship, of Jesus Christ in all things, in every detail, is the first
basic factor to spiritual fulness. In so far as He has His place in us and in
our affairs, that will determine our measure of spiritual fulness, or the
measure in which God is with us. The measure of God in fulness is the measure in
which Christ is Lord. Of course, that is so familiar to you, that you wonder why
there is so much emphasis, but there it is.
Now you can understand why it comes here in
Isaiah 6, and point is given to it here because this is set over against
Uzziah's presumption. "In the year that king Uzziah died..." And you know
the story of Uzziah. Uzziah was a great king and brought Israel up to a very
high standard, and while he was right, God prospered him until "his heart was
lifted up" (2 Chron. 26:16), until pride arose within him, and then he went
into the temple of God and approached the altar with incense. The priests
appealed to him, pleaded with him, urged him. "It pertains not unto you, Uzziah";
but he proceeded, he asserted himself in his pride, he presumed upon his
kingship, and there he was smitten with leprosy and went out white and leprous,
and died a leper. "In the year that king Uzziah died", in the year that
that presumptuous kind of kingship was smitten, in the year that that assertive
headship of man was stricken, "in the year that king Uzziah died I saw the
Lord sitting upon a throne, highly lifted up... My eyes have seen the King",
and everything is "Holy, holy, holy". That could be more literally and
properly translated: 'Exalted, exalted, exalted, is the Lord of hosts'. It is
the dethronement of every other lordship, every rival lordship, every assertive
lordship and headship, everything that presses into the things of God, taking
the place of the one Lord.
Dr. Campbell Morgan calls Isaiah the prophet of
the theocracy - that is, God is King. He works out his analysis on that
principle right through these prophecies. Is Israel failing to give God His
place? Then, like Uzziah, Israel must be set aside, and another brought in
giving God His place. It means a great deal more than we mean when we say that
we make Jesus King and we recognize that He is Lord, and we want Him to be Lord.
But most of our troubles come along that line. We have not such absolute
confidence in His Lordship, in His wisdom, the sovereignty of His wisdom, the
sovereignty of His love. We have not such confidence as to make it impossible
for us to have any quarrels with the Lord, disputes, controversies. The Lord is
taking a way with us and we do not like it, and we feel very bad about it, and
we get ourselves into trouble with the Lord because His sovereign wisdom is
choosing a course that is not the one that we would choose, to say the least of
it, and while these controversies go on, we say, The Lord does not seem to be
interested in us, why should we take His interests to heart? We just give it up,
do nothing about it.
While there is anything like that, we are at a
standstill spiritually; there can be no possible increase of divine fulness, no
possible committal of Himself to us in any further measure. It is all hanging
upon this question of His Lordship. It is not till we get down before the Lord
and say, "However it seems and whatever I feel about it, You Lord, must have
your way; I must get out of Your way, I must come into line with you." We must
really deal with the Lord like that. When that is true and thorough, it will be
like the opening of a brass gate. There will be spiritual enlargement and growth
on our part, and usefulness to the Lord. This kind of ministry is bound to be
the end of it all. When He is Lord, there is a ministry of value to Him, serving
His sovereign purpose. It begins with the Throne. "Exalted, exalted, exalted is
the Lord of hosts."
The House of God
The temple, the house of God. That is the place
where God has all His rights, where God is ceded His rights. Now, not to take a
lot of time in talking about the temple, let us go right over to the spiritual
counterpart of this temple in the New Testament. When we come into the book of
the Acts, where first of all He is Lord, the Kingship is established, is
settled. The next thing is the house of God, the church, the spiritual temple,
but you do not find that the temple is that thing in Jerusalem called the temple
by the Jews. Neither is it the upper room where the apostles are meeting. What
is it? It is the people themselves. This is a very mobile temple. It is moving
up and down the streets, round and round Jerusalem from house to house. It is
the people. I do not know where it was that they brought the proceeds of their
sales of properties, goods and chattels, and laid them at the apostles' feet,
but I do know that there judicial ministry was fulfilled. The Holy Ghost brought
in the judicial element.
Ananias and Sapphira met God the Holy Ghost.
"You have not lied unto men, but unto God." That could have happened
anywhere in Jerusalem, out of doors or indoors, because the temple was no longer
in one place, one building. It was a people, a people constituted by and on the
ground of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Where He is Lord, there is His House,
the place where He has His rights. So the temple now in this dispensation is a
people gathered into the Name of the Lord Jesus, two or three the minimum,
representing the corporate principle. One person cannot represent the temple of
God in that full divine sense. Of course, our bodies individually are temples of
the Holy Ghost, but that is another meaning from the house of God in the
corporate full sense. So there must be the corporate indicated by two or three
as a basis, gathered into the Name.
You know the way in which that Name was used at
the beginning. "In the name of Jesus". They were challenged - "In what name
have you done this?" (Acts 4:7). "In the name of Jesus Christ", and
God was committing Himself in that Name, and the church was that constituted by
the Name which is the Name of the Lord, the King. If the Lord is given this
second thing in reality - not a congregation, not just a company of people, a
number of people congregating in any given place, but a true corporate entity
gathering into the Name of Jesus on the ground of His Lordship - you know
spiritual fulness, increase. There you will have riches, life, light, glory and
wealth. Outwardly it is a very simple thing. Inwardly it is a very radical thing
to be found in organic union with other believers constituted by the Holy Ghost
sent down from heaven, Whose business it is to honour the Name of the Lord
Jesus. And Ananias and Sapphira met the Holy Ghost as the custodian of the
Lordship of Christ, and the Holy Ghost exercised that custodianship in the midst
of a company, a people who were constituted by His Lordship, who met upon the
ground of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
What is the church? It is that which is
organically built upon the Name, to which He gives His name. That opens a lot of
Old Testament content, as you know - the place of the Name. But just to return
to where we started, we said that if we give God what He has laid down and
revealed as requisite to His full thought, He comes in on that in fulness. Give
God a true spiritual expression of His Son corporately, the House of God which
is only Christ corporate, and you find that more than ordinary life and light
and spiritual wealth will be found there amongst those people.
The Cross
Thirdly, the altar. "A live coal... taken
with the tongs from off the altar". Here is another essential to God. He
must have it; He has revealed this as indispensable. What is the immediate value
and significance of the altar as indicated in this chapter, and capable of such
wide expansion by the Word of God? Well, the altar, of course, is the Old
Testament name for the New Testament Cross. But its immediate effect and value
is this, that it is that which makes suitable for God's house and God's service.
Isaiah saw the Lord, "My eyes have seen the King." He saw the temple, the
place where God is ceded all His rights, "Woe is me! for I am undone." 'I
cannot stand here in the presence of this Lord, I cannot enter this temple, I am
undone.' "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of
unclean lips." A touch of the altar made him suitable for the presence of
the Lord and for the house of the Lord. It dealt with the condition which set
him aside and ruled him out. It made possible his coming into the place of the
thrice-exalted Lord, where all God's rights were secured to Him. "This has
touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away" - by the altar, by the
Cross, by its touch.
"Your iniquity is taken away." That word
'iniquity' is the word 'perversity'. Uzziah the perverse; Israel, the perverse;
Isaiah was involved in the state of perversity in the nation and was infected
himself by that perversity, and with God perversity goes right to the very root
of evil. God does not look upon us as just perverse little children. We may look
at a little child and say, a very perverse child and make excuses, but God never
looks at perversity like that. God, in all perversity, sees its whole history.
He sees at a glance the history of that right back up there to the next one on
the other side of His Throne, that covering cherub, Lucifer, Son of the Morning;
perversity entering into him and heaven, and then later earth being wrecked and
ruined by that iniquity. "Till iniquity was found in you" (Ezek. 28:15).
That is the word of our Authorized translation. "Until perversity was found in
you". God sees the whole history of perversity, traces it back to its source and
says, This thing is of the devil, and its meaning is rivalry to the very Throne
of God. "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of
God" - the perversity of Lucifer and his iniquity.
That very root of Satan in our natures which
shows itself in every kind of rebellion, every bit of perversity, has been dealt
with in the Cross. You cannot possibly be perverse in the presence of His
absolute Lordship. The two things cannot go together. He cannot be King and you
be king at the same time. Heaven could not contain two supreme lords, one had to
go. And God's house cannot have two lordships, two wills, two minds; there is
only one here.
The Cross deals with the thing that is
rivalling God. A rival to God, another will, another mind, another heart,
another way - the Cross deals with that and brings us into the place where all
His rights are secured. It breaks down all perversity. Uzziah's perversity
brought on him leprosy, and then death. Isaiah recognised his perversity and
submitted: "I am undone." He did not assert himself; he went down in the dust
before the Lord and was cleansed and became a living messenger of God.
In so far as the Lord has what is meant by the
altar, the Cross, provided for Him by you and by me, that is the measure of
divine fulness and only the measure of divine fullness. And if the Lord is going
to get greater fulness in us and if at length the church which is His Body is
going to be the fulness of Him that fills all in all, then the Cross will be
very utterly applied to that church and to every member thereof. If God is going
to secure this body - call it the remnant if you like - this representative
company for His full expression, there will be the Cross applied; dealing all
the way along with every bit of perversity, resistance, contrariness and
everything that is not yielded to the Lord, to make us suitable for that
spiritual house which is the fulness of Him.
The Resultant Ministry
Finally, the ministry. "Whom shall I send,
and who will go for us?" Who? Those who have come under the Lordship, who
have met the power of the Cross, the altar and who have come into the house of
God in this spiritual way - such will fulfil the ministry, such as know that
their iniquity is taken away and their sin forgiven. Oh, what a blessed
suggestion there is here. You see, the year that Uzziah died was a Jubilee year,
and the Jubilee commenced on the evening of the day of atonement. And in the
year that king Uzziah died the Lord said to Isaiah, Your sin is atoned for.
'Atoned' is the word in the original; ours is an unfortunate translation. Your
sin is atoned for — even better than 'forgiven'. It is atoned for. It is the
word here for atonement, 'covered' some translations put it.
What is atonement? It is covering. "Your sin is
atoned for." On the eve of the day of Atonement, when Uzziah died because his
sin was not forgiven, Isaiah lived and came into new ministry because his sin
was atoned for. One exalted himself and there was no atonement; one humbled
himself and there was atonement. These are they who can fulfil the ministry, who
can respond to the divine need. This was not Isaiah's call to the ministry; that
had come some time before and he had fulfilled ministry. This is his new
commission. It was as a consequence of these other things to which we have
referred that Isaiah was able to say, "Then said I, Here am I; send me."
When? 'When I had been made suitable by the Cross for a place in the house of
God where only God is known as Lord. When that was so, then I said, "Here am
I; send me", and He said, "Go".'
But do not let us take hold of that wrongly in
this way, that we are waiting to be made suitable. The Cross is an accomplished
fact. It was accomplished long ago, and in God's mind we were crucified with
Christ. All we have to do is to step back two thousand years and say, it
happened then; not, it is going to happen tomorrow. "I have been crucified
with Christ; and it is no longer I... but Christ". It is something already
done to be stepped into, and when we stand by faith into that position, He can
say, Go!
This ministry, this new commission which came
to Isaiah was not a pleasant one. It was judicial. "Shut their eyes." The
word is really, 'Smear over their eyes.' "Make their ears heavy." "Make the
heart of this people fat." Take measures so that now, if they want to, they
will not be able to; take away their ability. Terrible! "I would not,
brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery... that a hardening in part has
befallen Israel, until..." (Rom. 11:25). There is an 'until' at the end of
this chapter. Until what? Well, two things. All that has hindered God has been
thoroughly dealt with; the other, "until the fulness of the Gentiles be come
in", until God has that object of His sovereign purpose from all eternity;
then all Israel shall be saved. God has taken out of the nations a people for
His Name: that church, which is neither Jew nor Greek and not a conglomeration
of them all, but none of them at all. It is Christ as all and in all, Christ
corporately expressed; that is the church, the people for His Name.
Isaiah's ministry, under the sovereignty of
God, was not, after all, so negative as it looked. It was positive in its
object, really only to get out of the way the obstruction to make way for His
end. Whatever effect the ministry may have, God's purpose is always positive. It
is toward that end of His eternal counsels: the fulness of His Son in a people.
That is the ministry which lies to your hand and to mine, in many ways, various
ways, diverse ways. That is the ministry. That is there, so to speak, suspended,
waiting. Listen to that. Believe that. It is true. You are called to the
ministry, every one of you. You have to do nothing in an ecclesiastical or
official way to be a minister. You need take no title; you need be given no
title. You are called to the ministry of bringing a contribution of some kind
toward that ultimate fulness of Christ in one of hundreds of ways, as many ways
and many more ways than there are people here this afternoon; called to the one
ministry, and it is waiting there. The voice of God is saying, Who? There is
only one thing that stands in the way of your response. That is the Lordship of
Jesus Christ established by the Cross, making us suitable to have a place in
that house of God which serves the rights of God and brings to Him His rights.
"Then said I..." When? It is suspended.
God invites us, He is inviting us to the ministry. Who? Here is an invitation to
the ministry, but there is a 'then' about it. We cannot respond until all this
quarrel with the Lord, these controversies with the Lord, all this perversity,
all this recalcitrance, is ended and He is Lord. The Cross has touched
perversity and put it away, it is all dealt with by the Cross. Then we are able,
we are allowed, to say, "Here am I, send me" and He will say to you, "Yes, go".
May the Lord find us in positive value to Himself.
First published in the "Golden Candlestick" magazine, Vols. 139 & 140 from previously unpublished and undated manuscripts.