The Lord of Glory Calls His Messenger

Isaiah 6:8

The next act in this heavenly drama changed Isaiah’s life forever. He heard the Lord calling, “Who should I send? Who will go for us?” The word us clearly has a trinitarian basis, for the dual question parallels “I” (“Who should I send?”) with “us” (“Who will go for us?”). Only the triune God can speak like this. The Lord has a mission, and he deliberates openly in the heavenly council. Daniel 7 pictured God enthroned, served by a hundred million angels (v. 10), any of whom would have been eager to serve the Lord’s purposes. But the Lord willed a human messenger to go on this mission to Israel. A compulsion overcame Isaiah, and he boldly presented himself for service: “Here I am. Send me” (6:8). What a beautiful sequence in this narrative: a vision of the enthroned Lord in his glory leads to overpowering heavenly worship, and it also leads to Isaiah’s awareness of his sinfulness, which leads to him crying out against himself, which leads to the atoning work for his sin, which leads to hearing the Lord call for a messenger, which leads to Isaiah presenting himself for service. In this sense, Isaiah 6 stands as a lasting paradigm for all who would enter the Lord’s service.

Isaiah 6:9-10

The message entrusted to Isaiah is shocking both to him and to the generations that followed him. It involves the Lord’s surprising work in hardening the hearts of the Israelites to refuse to listen to God’s word. The message itself is much like the live coal taken with tongs from the altar of God: it has a divine origin, it burns with searing power, and the messenger has no power to alter it in any way. The prophet must drop this live coal into the hearts of God’s people with its heavenly fire unquenched. The prophet may not be silent, for then would God’s word burn like a fire within his heart, within his very bones, and he would be unable to hold it in (Jer 20:8-9). God’s message through Isaiah is shocking because it seems that God is ordaining that he will harden the hearts of the Israelites against his word, with the outcome that they will refuse to repent and be healed of their sins. This judicial hardening from God confirms their pattern as a “stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears” (Acts 7:51). Scripture reveals that Satan blinds human eyes from the work of God (2 Cor 4:4), and many passages (like Acts 7:51) teach that the people harden their own hearts and blind their own eyes. But this passage clearly teaches the role of God in hardening hearts and blinding eyes against his word; the verbs are active and decisive, “do not understand, . . . do not perceive. Make the minds . . . dull; deafen their ears and blind their eyes.” These strong commands from God are designed to prevent the Israelites from seeing, hearing, understanding, turning, and being healed. It is troubling to people who think God always only acts to open blind eyes, soften hardened hearts, and work salvation in everyone to whom he sends a messenger. But clearly this passage teaches the opposite: sometimes God sends a messenger specifically to harden hearts and confirm the condemnation of people.

In the New Testament this passage is quoted four times to explain why Jesus used parables to teach the people. In effect, Jesus said he used parables so that the people will not understand and turn and be healed. It is a powerful weeding-out process. The elect hear Christ’s parables and, not understanding, humble themselves and come to Jesus for the explanation; then, by God’s sovereign grace through Christ, they are blessed with explanations leading to insight. The “outsiders” get everything in unexplained parables to confirm their hardening (Matt 13:10-17; Mark 4:11). This is the doctrine of sovereign grace—both for mercy and for hardening (Rom 9:18)—worked out in the actual pattern of the message. Isaiah 6:9-10 is also quoted in John 12:39-40 to explain how it could be possible for the Jews to see all of Jesus’s miracles and still not believe in him. John’s use of Isaiah 6 shows that God actively blinds eyes and hardens hearts resulting in unbelief when it comes to Christ. Salvation is from the Lord, and it only comes when he works to remove the blindness and hardness.

Isaiah 6:11-13

Like Jesus who wept over Jerusalem and the apostle Paul who had “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” (Rom 9:2) in his heart over unbelieving Jews, so Isaiah cries out, “Until when, Lord?” He is asking, How long will I preach only to harden hearts? And how long will the hardening last? God replies that his ministry must continue until the Lord has carried out the judgments he intends against Israel: the cities will lie in ruins, empty, desolate; the people will be driven into exile. That is the judgment of the holy God against such a sinful people, the very thing he warned he would do before they ever entered the promised land (Deut 28:49-52).

But amazingly, by the grace of God, the Lord will leave a remnant, and like a tree that is felled leaving a healthy root system, so the remnant will become the future of Israel. The “holy seed” is the remnant of survivors, and they will be the stump that will again flourish under God’s hand. The apostle Paul speaks of the Jewish nation, which has generally rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ, in similar terms: an olive tree with fruitless branches stripped off but with a holy root system (Rom 11:16). No matter how desolate the land will become, God is not finished with the Jewish nation. Paul means the people will be humbled to the dust then exalted to heaven at the end through faith in Christ (v. 26).

John 12:41

The final surprise of Isaiah 6 comes when the apostle John unveils the true identity of the enthroned Lord, the glorious ruler of the universe—before whom seraphim veil their faces, whose glory fills the whole earth. After citing Isaiah 6:9-10 to explain why the Jews were rejecting Christ despite his many miracles, in chapter 12 John says these astonishing words: “Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke about him” (v. 41). In the context of John 12 the “his” and “him” cannot refer to God the Father but only to Jesus. In verse 37 it speaks of the one who performed many miracles before their eyes, but they still wouldn’t believe in him. Verse 42 speaks of many who did believe in him but were unable to confess him freely so they wouldn’t be banned from the synagogue. So verse 41 is speaking of Jesus. The great God of glory, seated on a throne high and exalted, the one whom the seraphim cannot see fully and they veil their faces because of his glory—that one is Jesus! The mystery of the incarnation: Jesus of Nazareth is the God of heaven and earth, the creator of fiery archangels and of lowly caterpillars alike, the one who crafted and shaped the mountains and who spread the stars throughout space. This is the one whose blood provides the only sure purifying remedy for sin. Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me! I am ruined by my sin!” The live coal taken from the altar represents Christ, his purifying ministry. Isaiah saw the glory of the preincarnate Christ and wrote about him. The glory of Jesus is infinite and will radiate throughout the new heaven and new earth forever. And Isaiah wrote about him so that we could see that glory by faith and turn and be healed.

This magnificent chapter calls us to a heavenly worship of the glorious Christ, to match the seraphim in their awe-filled cries before Jesus of “Holy, holy, holy!” It calls on us now, by faith, to understand that the universe is filled with his glory. It calls on us to understand the holiness of Jesus and how undone we are by the pollution of our sins. It calls on us to understand that the only atonement there can ever be for our sins is that which God works by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. It calls on us to hear Jesus calling out, “Who should I send? Who will go for us to the ends of the earth to proclaim the gospel?” It calls on us to answer by faith with full consecration, “Here I am, Lord; send me!” And it calls on us to understand God’s mysterious plan for showing mercy to some and hardening others by the proclamation of the Word.