Losing Sight Of The Glory Of God

It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord.   Isaiah 6:1

When God’s people lost sight of his glory, he revealed himself to one man and commissioned him to tell the people who God is. Isaiah was given that incredible privilege and awesome responsibility.

When Isaiah says he “saw the Lord,” one wonders what he actually saw. What does God look like? Isaiah writes, “He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple” (Isaiah 6:1). We wait for more, but that is all that Isaiah can say.

When Moses saw the God of Israel, he said, “Under his feet there seemed to be a surface of brilliant blue lapis lazuli, as clear as the sky itself” (Exodus 24:10). Moses could not look directly at God’s glory; he could only describe the brightness beneath God’s feet.

When John saw the glory of the risen Christ, he said, “His face was like the sun in all its brilliance” (Revelation 1:16). You can’t look directly at the sun. John is telling us, “I couldn’t look into the face of Christ; his glory was too bright.”

Let’s go back to this curious detail in Isaiah’s vision: “The train of his robe filled the Temple.” The Temple was an enormous building that had taken years to build. But the whole place could scarcely contain the end of God’s robe!

Then Isaiah tells us what he heard—seraphs, or angelic creatures, calling out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Heaven’s Armies!” (Isaiah 6:3). If we want to emphasize something, we can underline it or put it in italics. There is only one truth in the whole of the Bible that is triple underlined, and that is the holiness of God.

There is never a time when the Bible says that God is “wrath, wrath, wrath” or “love, love, love.” The holiness of God is so foundational to who God is that if we do not grasp his holiness, we do not know him as he is.

For further reading, see Isaiah 6