My 4-year-old great granddaughter once said, “This is AMAZING!” She was thinking about something other than this web site. However, it is amazing how a blog can disappear all on its own. This is what happened to the original blog for this week. It vanished overnight. So, let’s do it again.

“Then one of the seraphs [im] flew to me with a live coal in his hand, snatched with tongs from the altar.” The 6th verse begins with this statement. It doesn’t take much imagination to consider what may have been going through Isaiah’s mind. He is either in a heavenly state of being or at the gates of heaven itself. He sees one of God’s special angels coming toward him with a live charcoal held by tongs. Certainly he knew it was very hot if an angel needed to use tongs. The angel touches his lips with the live coal.

Verse 7 explains this angelic action while Isaiah was in the presence of the LORD. Isaiah had just told God that he had unclean lips. He figured that certainly God would see him as unfit to carry out God’s assigned mission. Isaiah himself states that his lips were touched by the live coal. The angel confirms the intent. God’s purpose was to demonstrate to Isaiah that he is now commissioned by God to carry out his commandment with clean lips.

Verse 8 Isaiah has a significant change of heart and accepts both the assignment and the forgiveness of his past sin. What might this mean to us today? Sometime in the years of a Christian life, there are past sin issues Satan continually reminds us of. We tend to not forgive ourselves. Better said, we find it difficult to think God has completely forgiven us.

Often missed in verse 8 is the change from singular, “Whom shaIl I send” to the plural. “ I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?  A change from “I” to “us”. Supporting the theological Trinity of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Verse 9 And He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’” Do not understand? Do not perceive? HUH! This is a bit difficult, but it has to do with translation. God is saying, “…Hearing you hear, but do not understand; and seeing you see, but do not know” [LITV]. They have no depth perception beyond the immediate. This is the core problem with God’s chosen Old Testament children but it is also a fact in today’s church. We hear but do not grasp. We see but do not perceive.

Verse 10 David Guzic puts it this way … God told Isaiah to go and preach to a people who wouldn’t respond, so that their guilt would be certain. As Trapp wrote, Isaiah would “Preach them to hell.”  Isaiah continued in his ministry with the same message. No wonder Isaiah was troubled with his ministry results. The message to us today is that we are not responsible for one’s salvation due to freedom of choice, but we are told to share the message of salvation.

How do we know this is what God intended? Read the next two verses.

Isaiah 6:11  Then I said, “Until when, Lord?” And he said, “Until the cities lie wasted without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is ruined and a waste, 

Isaiah 6:12  and Yahweh sends the people far away, and the abandonment is great in the midst of the land. 

These two verse refer to Israel in the north and eventually the Babylonian capture and dispersion of the Judeans in the south around 589 B.C..

Isaiah 6:13 Verse 13 can be a challenge to understand depending on the translation version used by its reader. Click on the highlighted passage [Isaiah 6:13] to see the New King James Version. Below find the Lexham English Bible translation.

And even if only a tenth part remain, again she will be destroyed like a terebinth or like an oak, which although felled, a tree stump remains in them. The seed of holiness will be her tree stump.” [LEB].

David Guzic says in his commentary …”The remnant will indeed return, but even the remnant will eventually be judged. Israel was not done being disobedient when they returned from the Babylonian captivity, and God was not done bringing His judgment on a disobedient Israel.” The people of the northern Tribes never returned from their Assyrian dispersion.

Rev. Dr. Jstark – 2025