Here Am I; Send Me

The year the king died, a young man in the temple saw the LORD. Not a vision of a message; the LORD Himself, on a throne, with the hem of His robe filling the building and creatures with six wings shouting so that the doorposts shook. And the first thing the young man said was not praise. It was a man discovering, in one second, what he was. Everything Isaiah wrote for the next sixty years came out of that second, and the coal that followed it.

In the year that king Uzziah died

"In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple" (Isaiah 6:1). Uzziah had reigned fifty-two years, and had been a good king until pride took him into the temple to burn incense himself, and "the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper unto the day of his death" (2 Kings 15:5). The only king most people alive had ever known, dead as a leper, and the throne empty. In that year, Isaiah saw the throne that was not empty. The earthly one had failed. The other one was occupied.

"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. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory" (6:2-3). Seraphim means burning ones, and even they cover their faces. Holy three times, which is how Hebrew says the most, and the same three that John heard in heaven eight centuries later, "Holy, holy, holy, LORD God Almighty" (Revelation 4:8); it had not stopped. "And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke" (6:4).

Woe is me

Undone. The Hebrew is closer to "cut off," "silenced," the word for a thing coming apart. Isaiah had spent five chapters pronouncing "woe" on everyone else, the drunkards, the land-grabbers, the judges who took bribes; six woes in chapter five alone. Now, in the light, the seventh woe is on himself. And notice what he says he is. Not a man of unclean hands, or heart. Unclean lips. A prophet, whose whole calling is his mouth, and the first thing the holiness of God shows him is that his mouth is the problem. Cassian saw why it took the vision to show him:

Of which he had previously been ignorant. You do not find out what you are by looking at yourself. You find out by seeing Him. Peter did the same thing in a boat full of fish: "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Luke 5:8). It is the only honest first reaction to the holy, and it is not the last one.

The coal

"Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged" (6:6-7). Isaiah did not ask for it. He had said "I am undone" and stopped; he had no plan. The coal came from the altar, where the sacrifices burned, and it came in tongs, because it was too hot even for a seraph to hold, and it was put on the one place he had confessed. Not on his forehead. On his mouth. It must have hurt. The text does not say so, and it does not need to; a coal from an altar on a man's lips is not a gentle thing, and the cleansing God does is not either. Thine iniquity is taken away. Passive. Done to him.

And only then, with clean lips and nothing asked of him yet, he hears the question: "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me" (6:8). Who will go for us: God does not command him. He asks the room. And the man who a minute ago was undone volunteers. That is the order, and it is always the order: the seeing, the woe, the coal, the sending. Nobody who has skipped the woe and the coal is sent, and nobody who has had the coal is left sitting there.

How long?

Then the commission, and it is not the one he expected. "Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat" (6:9-10). He is sent to preach to people who will not hear, and told so in advance. "Then said I, Lord, how long?" (6:11). "Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant" (6:11). Until it is all gone. Sixty years of it. And one line of hope at the very end, the kind that only makes sense afterward: "as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof" (6:13). A stump. A seed in a stump. Jesus quoted that hard commission about His own preaching, "By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand" (Matthew 13:14), and John, quoting it too, added the sentence that turns the whole chapter inside out: "These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him" (John 12:41).

Where this lands

When he saw His glory. John says the King on the throne with the train filling the temple, the one Isaiah could not look at and lived, was Christ. The seraphim were singing to Him. The coal came from His altar. And the holy seed in the stump, which Isaiah was told about and did not live to see, was Him too, "a root out of a dry ground," as he would write later, not knowing whom he was describing.

So the order still holds, and it has a face now. You see Him, and you are undone, and you say what Isaiah said and Peter said: I am a man of unclean lips. And the coal comes, from an altar where a sacrifice has burned, and it is put on the exact place you confessed, and it is not gentle, and it is not something you did. Thine iniquity is taken away. Then, and only then, the question, which is not a command: whom shall I send? The people who have felt the coal are the ones who answer it. And they are sent, often, to people who will not hear, for a long time, and told so, and go anyway, because they have seen the King, and the throne was not empty, and it is not empty now.

Related: The Suffering Servant, The Fear of the LORD, Repentance, and I AM. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.