Isaiah is terrified. He’s undone. He feels he simply can’t exist anymore. Have the circumstances of life ever brought you to that point? Isaiah feels this way because he has seen the glory of the Lord. It’s a fear even greater than that which many Bible figures experience when an angel messenger of the Lord visits them. The God Isaiah sees is altogether different. He is “other.” He is Holy, His glory filling the temple, angels surrounding Him in praise. What Isaiah is experiencing is probably more fearsome than any life difficulties
we have faced.


To see God’s glory brings home to Isaiah how much he doesn’t belong there. Isaiah himself is not holy, other, or glorious. He is too, too common. He is a sinner, unclean, just like the whole nation of Israel… like you and me.


But the Lord makes Isaiah pure. God has an angel touch his tongue with a coal from the altar, and Isaiah can now speak some of Scripture’s most beautiful words ever. God has purified us not with coals, but with the blood of Christ, for all of life.