Sunday Message: the great salvation

Today I want to share with you something I hadn't noticed before, and clarify where men and angels stand before God.  The whole thing wraps around Isaiah 6:

Isa 6:1  In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 
Isa 6:2  Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 
Isa 6:3  And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" 
Isa 6:4  And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 
Isa 6:5  And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for 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!" 
Isa 6:6  Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 
Isa 6:7  And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." 
Isa 6:8  And 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." 

Now at one level, this story is about, "How does Isaiah go from grovelling to boldness?"  But to get there, I need to reconstruct in somewhat of a backwards order.  We have three levels of beings here.  First, God is here, because Isaiah said he saw Him.  Which means, as no man can see the Father and live, this is Christ on the throne.  Curiously, there is NO difference between Christ and the Father for the angels; they hide their faces with their wings at ALL times.  But for us, there is a difference, because Isaiah isn't struck dead.

Despite their apparent inability to even look upon Christ, the Seraphim do not react as Isaiah did.  Instead of falling as if dead before Him as Isaiah did (as he says, because of his sins and the sins of his people), the Seraphim stand and proclaim His glory- and what a proclamation!  It was in a sermon by Chuck Swindoll that I first got the idea I'm developing here, and he curiously (to me) seemed to go back and forth as to the location of this vision.  First, he said Isaiah had come to the Temple, where he had the vision- the text doesn't say that, though I imagine that's possibly true.  Then he says Isaiah was transported to heaven.  To this I point out what Paul said about his own vision of heaven in 2 Corinthians 12- "Whether in the body or out of the body, I know not- God knows".  But then he comes to the proclamations, and when the text mentions 'the foundations of the thresholds were shaken', he mentions stone and mortar, as if Isaiah were still in the Temple.

Here I have to beg to differ with Chuck- this was in Heaven- there is no throne for Christ to sit upon in the Temple.  And the power of the proclamations were shaking Heaven itself!  A fraction of this power brought down the walls of Jericho; an iota of this power scattered the armies arrayed against Jehoshaphat.  This is power almost beyond describing, and it's no wonder Isaiah was overwhelmed.

And yet...

Now, let's look at Isaiah and that live coal.  Fact: the only altar there could be in Heaven is the altar of the Cross, where the only perfect Victim was sacrificed.  That this is the case is borne out by the fact that by being touched by the coal from it, Isaiah's sins were ATONED FOR.  This coal, if you want to see it this way, was a share of the very redemptive power that Christ wielded through Cross and resurrection!  By it, Isaiah's sins were removed by its touch.

And yet, this Seraph, this awesomely powerful being whose voice shook the very doors of Heaven... he HAD to take it with a set of tongs- HE DARED NOT TOUCH IT.

Do you get this?  This angel, so powerful and grand, so bold in comparison to the sinful Isaiah, could neither look on Christ in His glory, nor touch His salvation- but atoned-for Isaiah COULD.

In salvation, we are made superior to angels.  Now you can understand Paul saying in 1 Corinthians 6:3:

 3Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!

And it is through this power of Christ's salvation that Isaiah was boldly able to stand and say, "Here am I, send me!"  All of which is not to aggrandize man, or tell a neat story about Heaven, but to bolden the words of the writer of Hebrews:

Hebrews 2 1Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. 2For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; 3How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; 4God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?

Don't YOU neglect this great a salvation...