God Is
Seven Glimpses of God in Isaiah's Vision
I was planning to write an autobiographical essay but while reflecting on it something kept pushing my mind not to. Today always tends to be a day to reflect. And the thought that kept coming to my mind, a few days leading to this day, is this: “Why talk about yourself when God is? Who are you? You should think and talk about God, not yourself.” And the Holy Spirit lead me to Isaiah 6. And what I saw was breathtaking.
To come in contact with the God who is is to come in contact with what your mouth cannot say and your heart cannot imagine. You just stand enthralled, awed, and worship.
So I don’t have anything to think and talk about and reflect upon other than the God who is. Oh, may these visions of God burn in your heart as you read as it did mine while I was writing it!
Here’s Isaiah. He invites us to share his vision of God in Isaiah 6:1–4:
It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. They were calling out to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the lord of Heaven’s Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!” Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.
1. God Is Alive
First, God is alive. Uzziah is dead, but God lives. “From beginning to end, you are God” (Psalm 90:2). God was the living God when this universe came into existence. And He will be living ten trillion ages from now when all the intelligent fools against His reality will have sunk into oblivion like how the Titanic sank!
“It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord.” There is not a single head of state or president in all the world who will be there in fifty years. The turnover in world leadership is one hundred percent. In a brief 110 years this planet will be populated by billions of brand new people and all of us alive today will have vanished off the earth like Uzziah. But not God. He never had a beginning and therefore depends on nothing for His existence. He always has been and always will be alive. God is!
2. God Is Authoritative
Second, God is authoritative. “He was sitting on a lofty throne.” No vision of heaven has ever caught a glimpse of God plowing a field, cutting His grass or shining shoes or filling out reports, or loading a truck. Heaven is not coming apart at the seams. Indeed God is never at wits’ end with His heavenly realm. He sits. And He sits on a throne. All is at peace and He has control.
“We do not give God authority over our lives. He has it whether we like it or not.”
The throne is His right to rule the world. We do not give God authority over our lives. He has it whether we like it or not. What utter folly it is to act as though we had any rights at all to call God into question! We need to hear now and then the blunt words of Virginia Stem Owens who said: “Let us get this one thing straight. God can do anything he damn well pleases, including damn well. And if it pleases him to damn, then it is done, ipso facto, well. God’s activity is what it is. There isn’t anything else. Without it, there would be no being, including human beings presuming to judge the Creator of everything that is.”
I agree. Few things are more humbling, few things give us that sense of raw majesty, as the truth that God is infinitely authoritative. He is the Supreme Court of the universe, the Legislature, and the ultimate Chief Executive. After Him, no appeal. God is!
“The throne of God’s authority is not one among many or one among the best. It is lofty.”
3. God Is Omnipotent
Third, God is omnipotent. The throne of His authority is not one among many or one among the best. It is lofty or as other translations put it “High and lifted up.” “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up” (ESV). That God’s throne is loftier than and higher than every other throne signifies God’s superior power to exercise His authority. No opposing authority can nullify the decrees of God. What He purposes, He accomplishes. “Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish” (Isaiah 46:10). “He does as he pleases . . . No one can stop him” (Daniel 4:35).
To be gripped by the omnipotence (or sovereignty) of God is either marvelous because He is for us, or it is terrifying because He is against us. Indifference to His omnipotence simply means we haven’t seen it for what it is. The sovereign authority of the living God is a refuge full of joy and power for those who keep His covenant. God is!
“The sovereign authority of the living God is a refuge full of joy and power for those who keep His covenant.”
4. God Is Resplendent
Fourth, God is resplendent. “I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple.” You have seen pictures of brides whose dresses are gathered around them covering the steps and the platform. What would the meaning be if the train filled the aisles and covered the seats and the choir loft, woven all of one piece? That God’s robe fills the entire heavenly temple means that He is a God of incomparable splendor and beauty. The fullness of God’s splendor and beauty shows itself in a thousand ways.
For one little example, according to Hubble, there are galaxies and stars out in space other than our milky way galaxy. And they say that there are other galaxies and stars yet to be discovered where none of us can see and marvel. They are spectacularly weird and beautiful. Why are they there? Why not just a few galaxies and stars? Because God is lavish in splendor. His creative fullness spills over into excessive beauty. And if that’s the way the universe is, how much more resplendent must be the Lord who thought it up and made it! Ah! God is!
5. God Is Revered
Fifth, God is revered. “Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.” No one knows what these strange six-winged creatures with feet and eyes and intelligence are. They never appear again in the Bible—at least not under the name Seraphim. Given the grandeur of the scene and the power of the angelic hosts, we had best not picture chubby winged babies fluttering about the Lord’s ears. Angels are fearful creatures. And according to verse 4, when one of them speaks, the foundations of the temple shake. There are no puny or silly creatures in heaven. Only magnificent ones.
And the point is this: not even they can look upon God nor do they feel worthy even to leave their feet exposed in His presence. Great and good as they are, untainted by human sin, they revere their Maker in great humility. An angel terrifies a man with his brilliance and power. But angels themselves hide in holy fear and reverence from the splendor of God. How much more will we shudder and quake in His presence who cannot even endure the splendor of His angels! God is!
“The possibilities of language to carry the meaning of God eventually run out and spill over the edge of the world into a vast unknown.”
6. God Is Holy
Sixth, God is holy. “They were calling out to each other, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the lord of Heaven’s Armies!’” The word “holy” is the little rocket that we use to lunch into the space of language. The possibilities of language to carry the meaning of God eventually run out and spill over the edge of the world into a vast unknown. “Holiness” carries us to the brink, and from there on the experience of God is beyond words.
The reason I say this is that every effort to define the holiness of God ultimately winds up saying: God is holy, which means God is God. Let me illustrate. The root meaning of holy is probably to cut or separate. A holy thing is cut off from and separated from common (we would say secular) use. Earthly things and persons are holy as they are distinct from the world and devoted to God. So the Bible speaks of holy ground (Exodus 3:5), holy assemblies (Exodus 12:16), holy sabbaths (Exodus 16:23), a holy nation (Exodus 19:6); holy garments (Exodus 28:2), a holy city (Nehemiah 11:1), holy promises (Psalm 105:42), holy men (2 Peter 1:21) and women (1 Peter 3:5), Holy Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:15), holy hands (1 Timothy 2:8), a holy kiss (Romans 16:16), and a holy faith (Jude 20). Almost anything can become holy if it is separated from the common and devoted to God.
But notice what happens when this definition is applied to God Himself. From what can you separate God to make Him holy? The very god-ness of God means that He is separate from all that is not God. There is an infinite qualitative difference between Creator and creature. God is one of a kind. He is in a class by Himself. In that sense, He is utterly holy. But then you have said no more than that He is God.
“The very god-ness of God means that He is separate from all that is not God.”
Or if the holiness of a man derives from being separated from the world and devoted to God, to whom is God devoted to derive His holiness? To no one but Himself. God is God-centered. It is blasphemy to say that there is a higher reality than God to which He must conform to be holy. God is the absolute reality beyond which is only more of God. When asked for His name in Exodus 3:14, He said, “I am who I am.” His being and His character are utterly undetermined by anything outside Himself. He is not holy because He keeps the rules. He wrote the rules! God is not holy because He keeps the law. The law is holy because it reveals God. God is absolute. Everything else is derivative.
What then is His holiness? Listen to three texts. 1 Samuel 2:2: “There is none holy like the LORD! There is no one besides you.” Isaiah 40:25: “To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?’ ask the Holy One.” Hosea 11:9: “I am God and not a mere mortal. I am the Holy One living among you.” In the end, God is holy in that He is God and not man (cf. Leviticus 19:2 and 20:7. Note the parallel structure of Isaiah 5:16).
He is incomparable. His holiness is His utterly unique divine essence. It determines all that He is and does and is determined by no one. His holiness is what He is as God, which no one else is or ever will be. Call it His majesty, His divinity, His greatness, His value as the pearl of great price. In the end, language runs out. In the word “holy” we have lunched to the universe’s vastness in the utter silence of reverence and wonder and awe. There may yet be more to know of God, but that will be beyond words. “The LORD is in his holy Temple. Let all the earth be silent before him” (Habakkuk 2:20). God is!
“It is blasphemy to say that there is a higher reality than God to which He must conform to be holy. God is the absolute reality beyond which is only more of God.”
7. God Is Glorious
But before the silence and the shaking of the foundations and the all-concealing smoke we learn a seventh final thing about God. God is glorious. They were calling out to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the lord of Heaven’s Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!” The glory of God is the manifestation of His holiness. God’s holiness is the incomparable perfection of His divine nature; His glory is the display of that holiness. God is glorious means God’s holiness has gone public. His glory is the open revelation of the hidden revelation of His holiness. In Leviticus 10:3, God says, “I will display my holiness through those who come near me. I will display my glory before all the people” When God displays His holiness, what we see is glory. God’s holiness is His glory concealed. God’s glory is His holiness revealed.
When the Seraphim say, “The whole earth is filled with his glory,” it is because, from the heights of heaven, you can see the end of the world. From down here the view of the glory of God is limited. But it’s limited largely by our foolish preference for trivial things. Søren Kierkegaard likened us to people who ride our carriage at night into the country to see the glory of God. But above us, on either side of the carriage seat, burns a gas lantern. As long as our head is surrounded by this artificial light, the sky overhead is empty of glory. But if some gracious wind of the Spirit blows out our earthly lights, then in our darkness God’s heavens are filled with stars.
“God’s holiness is His glory concealed. God’s glory is His holiness revealed.”
Someday, God will blow and turn away every competing glory and make His holiness known in awesome splendor to every humble creature. But there is no need to wait. I have decided to join men like Job, Isaiah, Paul, John Calvin, and many others to humble myself to go hard after the Holy God and develop an unsatisfying taste for His majesty. To you and all the rest who are just beginning to feel it, I hold out this promise from God, who is ever alive, authoritative, omnipotent, resplendent, revered, holy, and glorious: “You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me (go hard after me) with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:12–13 ESV).
God is!
Editor’s Note: This is a slightly edited article that was first published on 10 July 2021.
O. O. Living (@OO_Living) answered the call to follow Jesus Christ at the age of fourteen after hearing the teachings of a Christian lady. He is founder and teacher of Godcentered Christianity. Living is author of God's Passion for His Glory and most recently, A Godcentered Life.