Student Devotionals
Isaiah 6:1-8
What do you do when the plans you had for serving the Lord change overnight?
I don’t know what all you planned to be doing in your life right now, but I know we have this in common: you had plans for how you’d be serving the Lord and those plans changed. And they changed quickly and completely.
It can be disorienting to have everything change. As we grapple with this, let’s look to the God who made the heavens and the earth and is seated on his throne today.
Our passage today is Isaiah 6:1-8. Early on in Isaiah’s ministry, God gave Isaiah a vision of Himself in heaven. I don’t know for sure, but I wonder if God gave him this vision early on not only to call Isaiah into ministry but to anchor his soul in a vision of God high and lifted up. No matter what crisis Isaiah would live to see or foresee, he would always remember this vision of God and draw from it great confidence.
So let’s look at this passage together. It starts off:
“I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high & lifted up. The train of his robe filled the temple.”
What is God doing when Isaiah gets a sneak peak in a daily moment in the life of God? He’s seated on a throne.
Isn’t it nice to know that God is seated? He’s not frantically pacing back and forth fretting about what to do next, or barking orders at the angels trying to manage the next crisis. He’s not taking a nap or out to lunch. He’s calmly seated on his throne, governing the whole universe. He’s present. He’s engaged. He’s in control. God really is reigning today. It is so important to remember God really is in control.
Isaiah would live to see and prophecy about many crisis in his life – nations destroying his nation and then one another. Countrymen carried off into exile. This vision of God seated on his throne was a strong anchor of hope for Isaiah throughout all the storms he would face. And it should be for us as well.
Our passage continues, “Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet and with two he flew.” Now, these are not hallmark angels. They’ve got 6 wings. That’s amazing. I don’t even have 2! Isaiah tells us in v. 4 that their voice is so powerful that it shook the foundations of the threshold! These are mighty majestic and awesome creatures! Isaiah surely might have marveled over them more, except they could not quit marveling about God. The passage says, “And one called to another and said, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is filled with his glory.”
We could talk about this verse for a while, but I want to zoom in for just a minute on the last part. The whole earth is filled with the glory of God. It’s so important right now to focus in here because our world is focused in on the effects a virus is having throughout our world. While the effects of the curse, the fall and sin, we still see God’s glory reflected throughout the world
I think the stars and planets particularly show God’s infinite power in creating them and sustaining them by the power of his word. The Bible loves to point to the stars to remind us of God’s greatness.
I’m no astronomer, but I love the planet Jupiter. They say the earth could fit into Jupiter1,300 times. It is so large, it is 2.5x the size of all our other planets combined. They say Jupiter’s Red Spot alone is 3x the size of earth.
Yet somehow Jupiter pales in comparison to our Sun as it is a mere 1/1000th the size of the Sun. But you know, the Sun isn’t even the largest star out there. That honor belongs to a start they named “VY Canis Majoris.” I’m no Latin scholar, but I’m pretty sure that means “Big Dog.” Not a bad name for the largest star.
How big is Canis Majoris? It’s diameter is 2000x greater than the Sun’s, making its volume 3-10 billion times more that of the Sun. If Jupiter is 2.5x size of all planets combined, this star is so big that if you put it at center of our solar system, its volume would extend all the way past Jupiter and perhaps even past Saturn!
This helps bring home to me that the whole world really is full of the glory of the Lord. God is powerful to make all of this and sustain it all. In Isaiah 40 God asks, “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span?...Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing.”
Well, it’s no wonder then that Isaiah responds as he does. In light of how great God is, he is eager to serve Him. In Isaiah 6:8 when Isaiah hears God is looking for a man for his mission, he throws his hand up and says, “I’m all in! Here I am send me!” I like to think Isaiah was throwing elbows at the angels to get the assignment before they could put their hands up.
This God still has a mission and he’s still looking for young men and young women to send to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and broken world. Let’s stay focused on the mission God has set for us. As we do, let’s trust the Lord with our lives, our plans and our ministries. He’s the one who made us, made our world and commissioned us into our mission in the first place.