Holy Trinity
Isa
6:1-7
6/15/25
In our Old Testament lesson this
morning, the prophet Isaiah describes an experience that was completely and
utterly overwhelming. He tells us
exactly when it happened – it was in the year that King Uzziah died. This was a time of uncertainty for
Judah. Uzziah had ruled for nearly fifty
years. It had been a period of peace and
prosperity. But in that year he died, at a time when it was becoming very
apparent that the Assyrians were a great power that threatened the nation.
God called Isaiah at this moment to
be his prophet. He would speak God’s
word during a time of crisis as Yahweh used the Assyrians to bring judgment
upon the northern kingdom of Israel. He
would deliver God’s word of Law and Gospel as he used the Assyrians to punish
Judah, but ultimately provided dramatic deliverance for the city of Jerusalem. And
he would speak a word of hope to Judah in the exile that was yet to come.
Isaiah describes his call in our
text. We don’t know whether this was something that he actually experienced in
the temple, or whether it was a vision. It doesn’t really matter, because
nothing could have made it any more “real” to Isaiah.
He says, “I saw the Lord
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe
filled the temple.” Yahweh is seated on
a throne because he is the king – he reigns over all as the Creator of heaven
and earth. The prophet seeks to capture
the exalted nature of God as he says that Yahweh was “high and lifted up” – so
much so that the fringe of his robe filled the temple.
Isaiah tells us, “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.” He sees fiery angelic beings
above Yahweh – the heavenly host that attend him. Next we learn: “And one called to another and
said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full
of his glory!’”
The seraphim acclaim God as they
announce that Yahweh, the One who directs the angelic armies, is holy. The threefold repetition of the word drives
home the point that he is utterly and completely holy in a way that has no
comparison. And they declare that the whole earth is full of his glory. Isaiah says that the foundations of the
thresholds of the temple shook at their voice, and that the temple was
filled with smoke.
Isaiah is confronted by the almighty
and holy God. His response is to admit
that he is completely undone. He says, “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!”
Isaiah’s response to being in the
presence of God encapsulates the situation that is true for every person who
has ever lived since the fall of Adam. God is the holy God, and his holiness
illuminates the presence of our sin in the most intense and frightening manner.
Created for fellowship with God, our sin now can only result in our
annihilation when we come before him. Remember, God has not changed since the
days of Isaiah. The writer to the Hebrews warns us that our God is a consuming
fire. Sinners who sin cannot have life with God. Instead, this sin evokes God’s
wrath and eternal judgment.
Sin prevents us from being in God’s
presence – it makes life with God impossible. And we are powerless to do
anything about this. We see this
illustrated in our text, for it is God who must act to remove Isaiah’s sin. We
hear: “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal
that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and
said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your
sin atoned for.’”
The Old Testament makes it
absolutely clear that there is only one true God – the Creator of
heavens and earth. As we learn in Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD
our God, the LORD is one.” We learn that this God is a personal God – he is no
mere force or power. He has a name,
Yahweh, and he enters into a relationship with Israel by taking them as his
own.
But how could sinful Israel live
with the holy God? And how could the blessing of Abraham pass on to the sinful
nations, so that they could as well?
Isaiah tells us that this salvation from God would take place through
the Messiah – the descendant of David.
But in prophesying about this he uses very puzzling language. He says: “For to us a child is born, to
us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his
shoulder, and his name shall be
called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there
will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it
and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth
and forevermore.” We wonder, how can the
son of David be called Mighty God?
Isaiah says that the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon the Messiah
– the shoot from the stump of Jesse – and that he will bring universal
peace. At the same time, he says of the Servant of the Lord, “Behold my
servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have
put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”
At times, the Servant is clearly identified as Israel. But other
times it is not so clear. And on one occasion the Servant seems to be an
individual who is the means by which God deals with sin. Isaiah writes, “But he
was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him
was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are
healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one--to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” The Servant
is described as a sacrificial lamb - as an offering by which God “makes many to
be accounted righteous.”
God’s Word called forth hope, but remained mysterious. Peter tells us that the prophets themselves “who
prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired
carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them
was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the
subsequent glories.”
And then in the fulness of time God acted. In the first century
A.D. the angel Gabriel appeared to the virgin Mary – a girl who was betrothed
to a descendant of King David. He told
Mary that her son would fulfill God’s promise to David of the Messiah. When she
asked how she – a virgin – would become pregnant – he told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power
of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be
born will be called holy--the Son of God.”
The angel told
Mary that this child to be born would be the Messiah descended from David. But
he also said that Holy Spirit would cause her to conceive, and that the child
would be holy – the Son of God. As we learn from Isaiah, only God is holy. Yet
somehow this child would himself be holy – he would be the Son of God
conceived through the work of the Spirit of God.
Jesus Christ was
born to Mary and at the beginning of his ministry he – the holy One - submitted
to John the Baptist’s baptism of repentance. After he was baptized, the Spirit
of God descended on him like a dove and a voice from
heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
The Son stood in the water. The Spirit descended upon him. And God the Father
spoke words based on Isaiah chapter 42 that identified Jesus as the Servant of
the Lord.
At his baptism
Jesus began his journey to the cross. He went as the Servant of the Lord
through whom God was redeeming us from sin. He went as God’s answer to the sin
that separated us from him. In death he
bore our sins and received God’s judgment to win forgiveness. Paul tells us, “For
our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might
become the righteousness of God.”
Sin brought death
for Jesus in our place. But on the third day, God raised Jesus from the
dead. The apostle Paul told the Romans
that Jesus was “descended from David according to the flesh and was
declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness
by his resurrection from the dead.” The risen Lord ascended into heaven and was
exalted as he was seated at the right hand of God. And then as we celebrated last Sunday, Christ
poured forth the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
God has not
changed. There is only one God – the
Creator of heaven and earth. But in
acting to save us, God has revealed more about himself. We have learned that
the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Scripture reveals that the Father
is God. The Son is God. The Spirit is God.
We find that they relate with one another. And yet there are not three
gods. Instead, God is three in one – the Holy Trinity. He is one God in three persons.
God has eternally
been this way. As we confess in the Gloria Patri: “Glory be to the Father, and
to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and
will be forever.” In the Old Testament there were hints and things that made one
wonder. God said, “Let us make man in our image.” There was the angel of the
Lord. There was language about Wisdom. There were references to the Spirit of
God. But it is only as the Father sent
forth the Son who was incarnate by the Holy Spirit that we have come to know
the triune nature of God.
Our knowledge of
the Holy Trinity bears witness to God’s love for us. The writer to the Hebrews says, “Long ago, at
many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in
these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” We live in the last days when the holy God
has acted in Jesus Christ to give us forgiveness so that we can live with him
eternally. No longer does sin cause us
to say, “Woe
is me! For I am lost” like Isaiah in our text. Instead, through faith in Jesus Christ we are
justified by God’s grace. We are reckoned as holy in God’s eyes – we are
saints.
Baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit our sins have been washed away.
In confidence we are able to approach the Father through the Son in the
Spirit. We look forward to the Last Day
when Christ returns in glory. For we will dwell in the presence of our triune
God forever.
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