When God spoke, and a person answered
God and Isaiah in the Temple
In the year a king died, Isaiah saw the King who never dies, and the vision undid him before it sent him. This conversation moves from woe to cleansing to a volunteer's cry: here am I; send me.
“Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”Isaiah 6:8
The conversation
The conversation. "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." Seraphim cry to one another, "Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory," and the posts of the door shake and the house fills with smoke. Isaiah's first response is not delight but ruin: "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." Then a seraph flies to him with a live coal from the altar and touches his mouth: "Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." Now comes the call, spoken as if overheard in the courts of heaven: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And the cleansed man answers, "Here am I; send me." God's commission is sobering, a message to a people who will hear and not understand, until cities lie waste, yet a holy seed remains in the stump.
What God was doing
What God was doing. God was revealing His holiness, and holiness in its full weight; the thrice-holy cry and the shaking temple show a purity that exposes every uncleanness near it. He was convicting, not to destroy but to prepare; Isaiah's "woe is me" is the necessary undoing that comes before usefulness, for no one is fit to speak for God who has not first been silenced by His holiness. He was cleansing by grace; Isaiah does not purge himself, the coal is brought to him, iniquity taken away and sin purged as a gift from the altar. He was calling, and He was letting the volunteer come freely; God asks "whom shall I send" and receives "send me" from a man who now knows both his uncleanness and his cleansing. This reveals a God whose holiness humbles and whose grace restores, who does not send the self-assured but the forgiven, and who lets the cleansed choose to go.
How it leads to Christ
How it leads to Christ. John tells us whose glory Isaiah saw: writing of Jesus, he says, "These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him" (John 12:41). The King "high and lifted up" on the throne was the pre-incarnate Christ. The coal from the altar that purged Isaiah's sin points to the true altar and sacrifice, for it is the blood of Jesus that "cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7), taking away iniquity we could never remove ourselves. The commission "whom shall I send" is answered ultimately by the Son, who said, "Lo, I come to do thy will" (Heb 10:9), the sent one above all sent ones. The God who revealed His glory in the temple has now shown it in the face of Christ (Heb 1:2-3), and those He cleanses He still sends.
Questions people ask
Why did Isaiah say "Woe is me" when he saw God?
Seeing the holiness of God exposed Isaiah's own uncleanness; he felt undone as "a man of unclean lips." A genuine vision of God's purity first humbles us before it commissions us, for no one serves God well who has not been humbled by His holiness.
What did the live coal from the altar mean?
The seraph touched Isaiah's lips with a coal from the altar, declaring his iniquity taken away and his sin purged. It was cleansing he could not give himself, pointing to the sacrifice and, ultimately, to the blood of Christ that takes away sin.
Whose glory did Isaiah actually see?
John 12:41 says Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus and spoke of Him. The enthroned King, high and lifted up, worshiped by seraphim, was the pre-incarnate Christ, which is why this vision leads so directly to the Word made flesh.