In the Year Uzziah Died: Isaiah’s Vision of Holiness - Sermon 12th October 2025

Good morning, everyone. Our Bible reading this morning is Isaiah chapter 6,

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

the whole chapter, verses 1 to 13.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne,

high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Above him were two seraphs, each with six wings.

With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet,

and with two they were flying.

And they were calling to one another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.

The whole earth is full of his glory. At the sound of their voices the doorposts

and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.

Woe to me, I cried, I am ruined,

for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips,

and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand,

which he had taken with tongs from the altar.

With it he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your lips,

your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?

And I said, Here am I, send me.

He said, Go and tell this people, Be ever hearing, but never understanding.

Be ever seeing, but never perceiving.

Make the heart of this people calloused.

Make their ears dull, and close their eyes.

Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,

understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.

Then I said, For how long, O Lord?

And he answered, Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant,

until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged,

until the Lord has sent everyone far away,

and the land is utterly forsaken.

And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste.

But as the terebinth and oak leave stump when they are cut down,

so the holy seed will be the stump in the land." This is the word of the Lord.

You know, there's lots of things happen in life.

And our family, Valerie and I, have had a fairly sombre week.

We had a funeral on Wednesday of a friend from Glenory who'd passed away,

and I was asked to lead that service and the internment.

On Friday, we had 300 people gathered in Jural Baptist Church for a friend of

ours who had passed away last weekend.

So I'm here this morning not to mourn. I'm here to give evidence to the reality of the Holy Spirit.

Last night, I was thinking about today and I thought, oh, I know there was a

song that I wanted to have.

I turned up this morning, Heath had chosen it without me saying anything.

So the Holy Spirit's alive and well. I'm here to give testament to that today.

Isaiah, I want to share with you this morning Isaiah's testimony.

And as an integral part of that testimony,

Isaiah had a grasp and saw aspects of the holiness of God.

And to do that, I want us to consider this incident in the life of Isaiah that Leanne read.

The Old Testament prophet, as you might remember, when he encountered the holiness

of God and how it transformed the rest of his life. Let's just pause for prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and for the record of so many different

things that share and show your power and your glory.

I pray this morning that you will use my words, not mine but yours,

to clarify and to challenge each of us this morning.

And I pray in Jesus' great name. Amen.

What does it mean when we say, the Lord is holy?

Well, you might say, well, God is holy? Of course he is. He's God. So he must be holy.

Looked at a reference, Tim Keller, who's someone you probably know and Mark's quoted him before,

a contemporary Christian theologian and author, and describes God's holiness

as the ultimate perfection, something which is indescribable and incomparable.

Can you describe the indescribable? To what do you compare the incomparable?

How do you outdo perfection?

Well, so just a good place to start is look at what God says about Himself.

Leanne read this morning about an instance of God revealing Himself to Isaiah

in such a way that he witnessed something of the wonder and holiness of God.

Now, Isaiah, as you probably know, was a prophet in Jerusalem.

He prophesied between the years of 740 BC until 685 BC.

Isaiah, the king of the time, died in 740.

So the account of Isaiah's vision was at the start of his ministry.

He was a prophet to all of Israel, but he lived in Jerusalem.

And that was obviously in the southern kingdom of Judah.

His ministry spanned the reigns of Isaiah, Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Manasseh.

And this was leading up to the time when Israel was taken off into exile.

Israel to Assyria and Judah but to Babylon.

Following this, Isaiah went on to be one of the most significant prophets of the Old Testament,

and God used him to reveal his purposes over many centuries and entrusted him

with many of the prophecies regarding Jesus'

coming, suffering, and death.

For example, Isaiah 40 contains the prophecy of the coming of John the Baptist.

Isaiah 53, the suffering of Jesus.

And in all, through Isaiah, there are 16 references to Jesus.

Now, while we look at this example in chapter 6, I want us to consider how Isaiah

felt about what he was witnessing and what effect it had on him as he came into

contact with this eternal,

incomparable,

indescribable God that he worshipped.

It was in the year the king Isaiah died that I saw the Lord.

He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

The first thing I want us to think about is that there was a definite time in

Isaiah's life when this happened.

Now, it's likely that none of us have seen the Lord as Isaiah did,

but it is nonetheless still very important that each one of us can identify

a time and a place where and when we saw the Lord.

The occasion may not have been in a direct vision like Isaiah,

but God can be seen through the eyes of faith.

And Jesus spoke about the fact that those, he talked about those who see and

believe, but more blessed are those who see through the eyes of faith.

So my catchphrase this morning is, it was in the year that King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord.

Now, Uzziah's vision of the Lord was very personal.

I saw the Lord. Not someone saw the Lord or a few of us saw the Lord,

but I personally saw the Lord.

Now, there are no Christians formed by association or heritage.

God doesn't have grandchildren like many of us do.

It's valuable if we've been blessed to have Christian parents and have been

brought up in a Christian environment, but that does not make us Christians.

Just like Isaiah, we must have a personal encounter with God through Jesus.

That took place for me when I was a young child, and that night is engraved

on my heart and on my mind.

Do you have a memory of such an occasion?

I know many of you will say yes, and others will say that they can't identify

a specific event like that.

And I'm certainly not doubting God's ability to save however he chooses.

But I am convinced that we must,

each one, be careful not to fall into Satan's trap of being a Christian by association

rather than by personal repentance and belief in the saving work of Christ through his shed blood.

We need to see God in his holiness.

Too often today God is seen as a mate but this is a confidence trick of Satan.

God is holy. is indescribable, incomparable, ultimate perfection.

Have you seen the Lord?

No matter what mechanism God chooses to reveal himself to you,

the critical element is that we can testify to the fact that we have seen the Lord.

And what did Isaiah see in this vision? God, sitting on a lofty throne,

and the train of his robe filled the temple.

I love the way that the NLT Bible describes God in a number of places,

and we see it in verse 5 of this chapter.

The King, the Lord of heaven's armies, our God is almighty, all glorious,

and he's surrounded by his angels who are constantly offering praises to him.

Now attending God on his throne were mighty seraphim.

The version that Leanne read said too.

I did some research, and the references I looked up and the commentaries said

there was an indeterminate number.

So, however many, they're pretty mighty creatures.

They each have six wings. With two, they covered their faces.

With two, they covered their feet.

And with two, they flew. Now, who are the seraphim?

Well, they're angelic creatures called in Hebrew the burning ones.

They're constantly moving around the throne of God, singing, holy, holy, holy.

We need to appreciate the force of this spectacle of the seraphim that Isaiah saw.

Isaiah sees this vision of God seated on his throne, and the sight is so spectacular.

This number of angelic beings flying all around who are on one hand dazzling

in their splendor, on the other hand, scary as.

These angelic creatures, the seraphim. They're morally perfect.

They've never thought a bad thought. They live in perfect obedience to God.

There's no sin or darkness in them. There is no imperfection in them.

We get a picture of their power and their beauty.

And when they sing, buildings shake and earthquakes happen and smoke fills the temple.

There are no quiet, docile creatures.

They're creatures that have a scary beauty about them, perfection that will

pierce you, and a power that shakes the building.

And even them, they will not look on the face of God on the throne.

Because he is so holy, because he is so glorious, they cover their faces with their wings.

Let's read on a little further and see what the seraphim were saying.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heaven's armies.

The triple usage of the word holy emphasizes the absolute separateness of the Lord.

The whole earth is filled with his glory. Whether this statement refers to God

in creation, or that the earth will be filled with his glory when Jesus returns and sets up his kingdom.

Is not certain. Either way, the Lord's glorious presence will one day dwell

more fully on earth, despite humanity's sinfulness.

The sound of the praises of the seraphim shook the temple to its foundations,

and the entire building filled up with smoke.

Wow, can you imagine that scene? Isaiah had a perfectly understandable reaction

to what he saw. Look at verse 5.

Then I said, It's all over.

I'm doomed, for I am a sinful man.

I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips.

Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of heaven's armies.

Know, when we see the Lord, we cannot have any other reaction but to be confronted

with our sin and our sinfulness.

If we have any other reaction, we are being tricked by Satan.

Isaiah expressed his sinfulness to God, recognizing that there was absolutely

nothing he could do to this hopeless situation before Almighty God.

Now, what Isaiah was doing was coming in humble repentance and throwing himself

on God's mercy to meet him in the face of this revelation from God.

You know, when we come in honest repentance to Almighty God,

His grace is displayed and His salvation is offered to us in the name of Jesus.

In Isaiah's case, he provided forgiveness and cleansing in the form of a live coal from the altar.

The angel touched his lips with the coal and the angel declared him righteous in God's sight.

Notice that the angel had to use tongs to pick up the coal and then touched Isaiah's lips.

Do you think it burnt his lips? I think it probably did. But we must remember

that it was not the coal that did the forgiving, but God.

Before we can know God, we must be touched by Him, purified by the blood of

Jesus, and prepared for a life of service by His Spirit.

This process can be painful, but we must be purified so that we can truly represent

God, who is so pure and so holy.

Now, the more clearly Isaiah saw God, the more aware Isaiah became of his own

powerlessness to do anything of any lasting value without God.

We go on in verse 8. God asks the question, Whom shall I send as a messenger to this people?

Who will go for us?

Isaiah answered that he was willing to be God's spokesman.

When God calls us, will we be willing to be his spokesperson?

Isaiah answered God's call and said, Here am I, send me.

And the next verses hardly inspired Isaiah with confidence.

God said, and he said, Yes, go and say to this people, Listen carefully, but do not understand.

Watch closely, but learn nothing.

Harden the hearts of these people. Plug their ears and shut their eyes.

That way, they will not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears,

nor understand with their hearts, and turn to me.

If you have answered the call of God, been forgiven and purified,

how keen would you be when you are told that people are not going to listen

and turn to God, but in fact the reverse, they will harden their hearts and

continue on as they'd been.

Look around today, we see a very similar reaction to the words of the God.

People hear, but don't listen. They plug their ears and shut their eyes to the claims of the gospel.

But that is no reason to give up.

I follow a devotional written by Spurgeon in the 19th century,

and this morning's One was talking about how dire the situation was in the country at the time,

how men were disobeying God and how terrible it was.

And Spurgeon said, well, that means the country's ripe for a revival.

And he quoted different names of Whitefield and others who came into the United

Kingdom and started with God's spirit, started a revival.

Rather than saying how dire it is and how can we possibly.

But Satan wants us to give up because we know people aren't going to hear.

But what Spurgeon was saying was that means that we're ready for a revival.

We're ready to turn around and find God because our responsibility,

is to speak the gospel of Jesus and to live the gospel of Jesus so that even

if people do not listen, God's presence is apparent.

And remember, that to all who believe in him, he gave the right to become his

children, because nothing is impossible with God.

Isaiah carried out his commission right to the end of his life.

After 55 years of ministry to the nation,

during that time, the northern kingdom was carted off to Assyria,

and shortly after, the southern kingdom was carted off to Babylon.

What happened to Uzziah?

Uzziah was killed by King Manasseh. How? By being sawn in two.

Well, the Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.

Have you seen the Lord, high and lifted up, surrounded by His angels, praising Him?

Unless we see the holiness of God, we cannot truly know Him and be His witnesses.

The cost is great. Look at what happened to Isaiah. But the reward is far greater.

Jesus is coming again. Get ready. There is no time to lose.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.

Let this be your experience, and if it is not, please seek the Lord.

He's willing to listen. He's always available.

And talk to someone here about your questions. And you too will be able to see

God in his holiness. Let's pray.

Father, we marvel at your greatness and your holiness, your indescribable attributes.

Lord, we come as your children and as people in need of cleansing,

people who need their lips touched with the coal of the fire of the altar of God.

And I pray this morning that we each one might put together a place where in

a time when we saw the Lord.

And Lord, if we can't do that, Lord, help us to seek you.

And those that truly seek you, you promise you will find. Amen.