In the year King Uzziah died

Isaiah 6:1

King Uzziah had been king for 52 years which was one of the longest reigns of the period. He began his reign when he was only 16 and ‘did what was right in the eyes of the Lord’. 

At the start of his reign he ‘set himself to seek God’ and was instructed ‘in the fear of God’ by the prophet Zechariah.

Because of all this, God made him prosperous.

He brought peace and security to the land of Israel by defeating the Philistines and Arabians. He built fortified towers and created a strong and well-equipped army. He commissioned the building of machines that could fire arrows and great stones. 

He was known as a man ‘who loved the soil’.

His fame spread throughout the countries around him, and it is said that he ‘became strong’.

See 2 Chronicles 26:1-15

Sadly, that strength was his downfall as, when Zechariah died, he lost his spiritual mentor and ended up disobeying God. He contracted leprosy, and from that time his son, Jotham, reigned with him.

Nevertheless, he was remembered as a good king, but, inevitably, he died.

You can see a remarkable number of parallels to our present situation.

A highly respected, long-serving monarch has died, leaving uncertainty and giving rise to the same questions we are asking today, especially, ‘How will the future look?’. No-one has been in this situation before.

I saw the Lord

It was in that same year that Isaiah ‘saw the Lord’. He had a vision of God in his heavenly temple which was at the same time magnificent and terrifying.

God is ‘high and lifted up’ and above him are seraphim (the word means ‘fiery ones’), who are magnificent creatures, yet their faces cannot be seen, and they cannot look at God. They call to one another with voices that shake the very foundations of the building, and which fill the place with smoke.

Holy, holy, holy

Isaiah can hear what they are saying – “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts”. The only attribute of God that has this three-fold repetition is his holiness. That’s essentially to do with God’s ‘other-ness’, there is nothing or no-one else like him. It’s a theme that runs right through the Bible, and one that Isaiah returns to often. (See Isaiah 40:18,25; 46:5,9)

Sometimes when we try to explain something we use analogies – “it’s like…”. For instance, when explaining the relationship between Christ and his church, Paul in Eph 5:32 uses the analogy of marriage. It helps us understand what is otherwise a mystery. 

But when it comes to God, there is no analogy. There is nothing like him. For sure, we (men and women) are made in his image, so in some ways we are like him. But it does not follow that God is like us. (There are attributes of God that we do not share such as our creatureliness).

The whole earth

The seraphim go on to say: “the whole earth is full of his glory”. Here is a statement affirming the sovereignty of God. He’s the one in control of the whole earth. At that’s the point. At a time when earthly leadership or rule is shaky or uncertain, God is there. He is in control. He is the constant.

As we look around today, we can see the aftermath of a global pandemic, a European war that is causing serious issues in food and energy supply, the consequent financial crisis and severe concerns for the coming winter, and we might ask ‘Is God really in control?’.

But the Bible affirms time and again that he is. It also says that his ways are not our ways. His purpose for us is not to give us comfortable lives, but to save us. In his sermon on Mars Hill, Paul says how people should ‘seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him’. He goes on to say that God ‘now commands all people everywhere to repent’.

It’s often when things get difficult, and we can no longer cope, that we turn to God.

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up”.

Maybe the need of our generation is the same.

Just as Isaiah saw his sinfulness and was forgiven – so we too might see the holiness of God, our own sinfulness and know his forgiveness.