Thursday, June 21, 2018

Kingdom worship

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. 2 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. 3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
Isaiah 6:1-3

We've just learned some things about faithfulness of God from the book Jeremiah. It time to dig deeper into the mysterious will of God. In doing so, we must come to terms with our age-old, inescapable battle with sin, can God's will result in our being holy?
Isaiah sees and records something that appears nowhere else in the Bible the seraphim, a body of worshiping angelic creatures,surrounding the Lord. Seraphim, mentioned only  here in Isaiah 6:2,and 6:6, are heavenly beings that resemble flaming fire in their person. I say that because the Hebrew word Sarap means "burn." lts the same word that is used to describe the fiery serpents that bit the children of Israel in the days of Moses (see Numbers 21:4-9). So these are hovering angels, Perhaps , blazing like fire, or so full of zeal they become fireside in their worship. They surround the throne of God, ministering to Him in continual praise.
Isaiah does not tell us how many there were. Maybe there were hundred, maybe dozens, maybe only few, but "each had six wings" and stood above the Lord, swarming about His throne with their zealous and dramatic expression of praise.
In this amazing scene, Isaiah is allowed to draw back the curtain of heaven and catch just a glimpse of the angelic creation and their activities that go on incessantly in the highest heaven, which we never see-their adoration and Praise of a holy God.
Not only could Isaiah see all this, he could hear the antiphonal voices in which they were worshiping, one calling out to another back and forth Holy, Holy, Holy," some have interpreted this so mean the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. I think, rather it is a reference to the Lord's infinite Holiness. When words are repeated three times. Here, this repetition conveys infinite exaltation. "Incredible holiness is due Your Name, O Lord God of Hosts. The earth is full of Your glory." Again and again, these mysterious seraphim called out such praise to one another.
In earthly terms, with the Israelites burning incense on the high places, worshiping like their pagan neighbors, the earth was not marked by evident of glory. But from the seraphim's viewpoint in the throne room of God, the earth is full of God's glory. Don't forget that. Today new newspapers will never report angelic praise. They tell nothing of the glory of God. They only tell what is occurring on the horizontal plane, and as you know, they focus mainly on the bad news. But the earth one day be full of God's glory. Don't doubt it. Our current surroundings will ultimately be removed, and they will be replaced by that which evidences the glory of God. But for a moment, Isaiah was caught up in a sense that other people couldn't see:

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