THE KING’S BUSINESS
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more 1“His train filled the temple”—there was room for nothing else: He was all in all (cf. 1 Kings 8:10, 11; Rev. 15:8; 1 Cor. 15:28). I t was overwhelming, this vision of God, all else sank out of sight. v. 2. " Before it {Him) stood the Sera phims ( seraphim ) : each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.” . The word “sera phim” means literally, “burning ones,” i.e., they were beings who were burning in their own holiness. Yet, holy as they were, they were sp overpowered by the sense of the holiness of Him in whose presence they stood, that with two wings they • covered their face, with two they covered their feet, while with but two they flew. That is to say, they had four wings for worship and only two for service (cf. Rev. 4:8, 9). With, what holy awe we ought to approach the One in whose pres ence the very seraphim veiled their faces and feet; and yet we do not need to veil our faces when we come into His pres ence; for, though He is infinitely holy and we are sinners, our sin has been perfectly atoned for by the death of His’ Son (Gal. 3:13; 2 Cor. 5:21), and.it is our privilege' by the atoning blood, to come boldly into His very presence (Heb. 10:19, 20), and with uncovered face look up into His face and call Him “Father.” Jesus Christ, His only begottpn Son, our Saviour and Lozd, has a place above the seraphim and when we receive Christ, we step into Christ’s place and have a place above the seraphim in our approach to God. v. 3. “And one cried unto another, and said,'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD {i.e., Jehovah) of Hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory.” \ This verse contains the central truth about the Lord whom Isaiah saw, viz.,. He is “h o l y t h a t is the fundamental truth about God in the Old Testament and in the New Testament (cf. 1 John 1:5). This vision of God AS THE HOLY ONE affected all Isaiah’s after preaching and again and again he speaks of Him throughout his prophecy as the
my head,” and that also would be perfectly true for I had seen the back of my head as reflected in a looking-glass. But some one will say “that It is not the back of your head that you see but a reflection of it in a looking-glass;” but if one will stop a moment and think, he will see that when he looks at another man face to face, it is not the man himself that he sees, but a reflection of the man upon the retina of his eye, and yet it is a perfectly truthful state ment for him to say that he sees the man. This apparent contradiction between the places in the Bible where it says that no man hath seen God at any time and where it speaks of persons seeing God, is felt by many to be one of the most irrec oncilable discrepancies In the Bible, but when we come to look right at it, we see there is no discrepancy at all. Doubtless the death of Uzziah, who on the whole was a goijly king, was a great shock to Isaiah*, and it must have seemed to Isaiah a great loss, and very likely he was utterly dis couraged, but just then, in the time of his discouragement because of the death of his influential supporter, the Lord came in with a fuller revelation of Himself. We often need to have our earthly props taken away in order to obtain a fuller revelation of the Lord Himself. As Isaiah saw God in this instance, he was “sitting upon a throne;” God is the real King (Isa. 66:1; Rev. 3:21; 4:2-11; Ps. 2:2-11). King Uzziah was dead, but the real King was still living. This real King, King Jehovah, whom'Isaiah saw, was high and lifted, up (cf. Isa. 57:15; Ps. 46:10; 108:5), How little men in our day realize how high God is. They attempt to reason about Him, what he must do and what He must not do, as if He were altogether such an one as they are themselves. In all our thought and speech about God, let us never forget that He is “high and lifted up” (cf, Eph. 1:20, 21). Such a vision of God as Isiah here had would change much .in our mod ern theology if our modern theologians only had it. Not only did Isaiah see Jeho vah as “high and lifted up,” but further
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