Isaiah 6:2-3 Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet… The first question that arises is, Who, or what were the seraphim? They belong to this vision only, and must stand in vital relation to the condition and circumstances of the seer at the time. It is to be noted, further, that the time was that of the greatest crisis in the life of the greatest prophet of the ancient world. It was the time when he was struggling through the portals of spiritual agony into the temple of prophecy. Such visions have no room for superfluous adornment. If ever a picture had a meaning that is worth knowing, it is surely Isaiah's picture of the seraphim. In the whole vision, as I have said, there is no sign of drapery. It throbs in all its parts with the struggles and revelations and hopes of the prophet's heart. What, then, was that crisis in the prophet's life in the light of which the vision will become interpreted? It is pregnantly indicated in the first verse of this chapter — "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up." These words indicate the battleground of Isaiah's soul. Around this King Uzziah, who was now dead, unusual hopes had gathered. In him many deemed that the Saviour of Israel had at length appeared. He feared God, and waxed mighty in his kingdom. On every hand he extended the realm of Judah, and made the foemen of God's people lick the dust. But when Uzziah waxed mighty, he revealed that he was but flesh. He became arrogant, as though the strength and prowess of his own right hand had accomplished all this, Then, forgetting the fear of the Lord, he presumed to carry the sacred censer into the sanctuary, and to usurp presumptuously the holy functions of God's anointed priesthood. Then the mighty hand of Jehovah that had upheld him so long struck him, and he fell. And with his fall a thousand hopes were shattered, and a nation's faith fell headlong to the ground. This was a critical moment for the young Isaiah. Now his faith must either die or be reborn with a new and more glorious birth. Now it shall be seen whether everything falls for him with the fall of the great Uzziah. The vision is the answer. When Uzziah died, the young prophet saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. The collapse of the Jewish monarch revealed the King Eternal. Now, beyond Uzziah's shattered throne, the young seer beholds the throne of God towering high in eternal majesty and splendour. The part that the seraphim play in this new consciousness is not far to seek. They are obviously an express contradiction of the attitude of Israel as typified and exemplified in the self-confident and presumptuous king. They represent the attitude which Israel ought to learn in contradiction of the attitude in which it was now found. They represent the prophet's own new ideal. Henceforth he will strive to make the attitude and the message of the seraphim his own. So the seraphim have probably no actual existence as celestial beings. They are here the symbol of a human ideal, wrought out of the struggling heart of a prophet. From the moment that his lips are touched with the glowing stone from the altar, Isaiah also becomes one of the seraphim. So the picture of the seraphim still, remains as an ideal, not only for the ministers of the Word of God, but also for me whole Church of Jesus Christ. Let us, therefore, consider their attitude and their message. I. In relation to THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE SERAPHIM, it seems to me that the name by which the prophet designates them is very significant. These seraphim are simply the "burning" ones. They stand around (not above) the throne, and partake of its burning glory. In this participation in the fires of God the seer sees the starting point of the new way that he is about to mark for himself and the nation of Israel and the peoples of the earth. He, too, will learn to stand in the presence of the glory of God until every fibre of his life is aflame with the same glory. He will learn to be a seraph, one of God a fiery ministers, one or His glorious ones. For such the true prophet must be. "He was a burning and a shining light," said our Saviour concerning John the Baptist. It is not enough to be rejectors of a higher light; we must become burners, and have a veritable fire of our own. There is a vaunted morality which is only a cold reflection of the life of Christ, in which the glory of the Christ is made nothing more than a chiselled model. The Christian man should be all on fire, yea, on fire to his very fingertips. Such must be our response to the glory of God's throne. We must receive it into our life until we catch fire, and respond to Heaven with a glory like unto its own. Note, in the next place, the perfect reverence which is here pictured: "Each had six wings. With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet." Of six wings, four are utilised for the purpose of doing reverence to the majesty of the eternal God. Here lies the central and most emphatic rebuke of the spirit of the Jewish people. Uzziah had no doubt rightly re]presented the prevailing spirit of the people when he dared presumptuously to invade the sacred offices of the temple of the Lord. Prosperity had made them arrogant, and arrogance had made them irreverent. In their own growing splendour they forget to do due homage to the glory of me Lord. The bulking throne of Uzziah had hidden the throne of Jehovah from view. The glory that made the seraphim veil their faces was not felt by the heart of the people. So as Isaiah gazes upon the veiled faces of the seraphim he passes from what is to what ought to be. Reverence is the mark of those that stand in the highest place, and henceforth will take a primary position in the life of Isaiah,. In reverence power begins. The vision of the seraphim with veiled faces and feet is sorely needed again in our day. There are those that make their boast in desecrating the sacred things of life, and in defiling the vessels of God's temple. Yet you may be assured that all irreverence is essentially impotence. It have its little day of loud presumption, and then the Spirit of the Lord shall blow upon it, and it shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take it away as stubble. The covering of the feet as well as the face is a striking picture. It is difficult to carry the spirit of reverence into the smaller, minuter, and obscurer details of life. There are many that remember to cover the face before God, yet that forget to cover the feet. We are on our guard on great occasions and in great things. In the sanctuary, with its atmosphere of worship, we bend our into reverent homage, but we forget that the cottage and the villa, the workshop and the office, are also holy ground. There we often walk unveiled. And the world sees us uncovered, and thinks there is no God. The Christian Supper of Communion we treat as holy, but the daily meal is reduced to commonplace. The seraphim teach us also self-effacement. The prophet sees the glory that they send forth, and hears the message that they utter in never-ceasing music, but the seraphim themselves are hidden from view, covered from head to foot with their own wings. They sing the message and flash the glory, but they completely efface themselves. Here again the attitude of the Jewish people as manifested in their king is challenged and contradicted. Uzziah, instead of effacing himself before God, had thrust himself ostentatiously forward, as though his own wonderful presence were necessary to bring glory to the land. If he had learnt to efface himself, he might have done great things for God and His people. But he gave glory to himself, and the Lord smote him. Self-effacement is no easy task, but is one of the fundamental lessons that must be learnt by the prophet of the Lord. There is no sight more contemptible on earth than that of a man parading his own marvellous personality when he has the message of the Lord to proclaim. To reverence and self-effacement the seraphim add readiness for service. "With twain he covered his face, with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly." "What a mistake!" says Mr. Modern Shallowbrain. "These seraphim are provided with six wings, yet they waste two pairs of them in reverence, and reserve only one pair for service, if they would only give up that other-world sort of thing which is called worship and reverence, and use all their six wings for service, what an increase of good there would be accomplished on the earth." So some simpletons talk, and act upon their own shallow creed, and for awhile you see nothing but the dust of their wings, as though they were turning the world upside down. Then they disappear, wings and all, and for all their labour nothing but a cloud of dust remains And even that God's whirlwind soon sweeps away. With the seraphim is the secret of power. The wings that fly have the strength of ten, because face and feet are veiled by the others. Out of unceasing worship spring forth the currents of power and the energies of service. Four things go together in the life of the seraphim, and they must be found in every good and strong life — participation in God's burning glory, profound reverence, self-effacement, and readiness for service. To divide them is disaster. II. The message of the seraphim is important, because it is clearly A MESSAGE FOR ISAIAH'S OWN HEART, the message that is henceforth to be the keynote of his own teaching. The strain is two fold. The first part is, "Holy, holy, holy, Jehovah of hosts." Some would have us eschew all metaphysical conceptions of God, yet Isaiah must needs begin with one, and a very profound one too. If there is to be any conception of God at all, it must be metaphysical. That the standpoint we adopt should be an ethical one does not in the least lessen its metaphysical character. The problem of the Infinite is essentially a metaphysical one, and the question that remains is simply one of little or much. Shall our conception of God be little or great, clear or obscure, definite or indefinite, true or confused? These are the alternatives. We cannot move a step in the sphere of true religion without some conception of God, and the fuller and richer that conception is, the nobler and stronger will be our religious and ethical life. Isaiah, like every true prophet, begins, not with the service of man, but with the nature of God. The source of all inspiration for him lies in the profound conception that the heart of the Infinite and Eternal is holiness, and such a conception has vast unfoldings. The Old Testament "holy" is a very beautiful term. George Adam Smith appears to say that its primary meaning as applied to God is simply "sublimity." If he will change that into "moral sublimity," I agree with him. But if not, I must dissent. I do not believe that the word, whatever its origin, is ever applied to God in the Old Testament except with a moral signification. The "high" place and the "holy" place do not mean precisely the same thing. "Jehovah of hosts" is a mark of sublimity. But the thrice "holy" involves an ethical view of the nature of God. The source of all inspiration for him lies in the profound conception that the heart of the Infinite and Eternal is holiness, and such a conception has vast unfoldings. The Old Testament "holy" is a very beautiful term. George Adam Smith appears to say that its primary meaning as applied to God is simply "sublimity." If he will change that into "moral sublimity," I agree with him. But if not, I must dissent. I do not believe that the word, whatever its origin, is ever applied to God in the Old Testament except with a moral signification. The "high" place and the "holy" place do not mean precisely the same thing. "Jehovah of hosts" is a mark of sublimity. But the thrice "holy" involves an ethical view of the nature of God. But there is another implication in "holiness," which the careful student of the Old Testament cannot fail to observe, namely, that of self-communication. That which seems at first an impassable barrier reveals itself as a yearning heart and stretched out hands. "Be ye holy, for I am holy," is a golden chain of link within link. Such a conception of God leads to the inspired and inspiring response, "The whole earth is full of His glory." Or, to put the song of the seraphim more accurately, "The fulness of the whole earth is His glory." These words mean one of two things, and perhaps they mean both. They mean that everything that is of any value on the earth is a ray from God's glory. All the fulness of the earth, everything of beauty and of joy, all the products of thought and organisation and energy and life, all the love of human hearts, and all the achievements of the human will, everything, in fine, that is lovely and of good report, belong to Him whose glory fills the heavens, are flaming sparks from the anvil of His brightness. Akin to this, though not identical, is the other signification. The words may mean that the earth can find its fulness only in and through the glory of God. This earth wants filling, for there is now in it many a gaping void; and nothing but the glory of God can fill it. We have now a larger term for the glory of the Lord than Isaiah had, and so can give his words a higher reading. For what is the highest reading of God's glory? Here it is: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father." Only in Him can the world receive its power, and The desert places of the earth blossom as the rose. In Him only all fulness dwells. (J. Thomas, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. |
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