Isaiah 6:1 ¶ In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 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. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
First, we must begin with my basic presupposition: to speak of God is to speak of the God who has eternally existed as one God in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Any reference to God’s glory can speak of the three in One, or of any of the individual persons in the Godhead. We determine this based on the context of the passage in question.
In relation to God’s glory, notice two things here. First, notice the language of fullness. In verse 1, Isaiah sees the train of the Lord’s robe ‘fill[ing] the temple.’ Second, the seraphim declare that ‘the whole earth is full of his glory.’ Jonathan Edwards picks up on such language relating to fullness as he describes God’s glory (externally) as “the emanation and true external expression of God’s internal glory and fulness.” God’s glory is his own internal fullness, or “his infinite fulness of good.” God is an “infinite fountain of holiness, moral excellence, and beauty” (Works of Jonathan Edwards (Banner), vol. 1, p. 100). In light of God’s fullness, which fills the temple, and indeed fills the earth, it should be no surprise that he is declared, not simply to be holy, but, to be ‘holy, holy, holy.’ There is a fullness to God’s holiness.
The Hebrew term in Isaiah 6 translated glory is כָּבֹד (kabod). The word generally denotes weight, abundance, honor, wealth, or riches, with weight being the primary reference. To speak of God’s glory is to speak of his weight or abundance. He is not simply holy, he is ‘holy, holy, holy;’ he is holy to the brim; he is, as it were, weighed down, or filled up, with holiness.
God’s abundance cannot be contained:
- 1 Kings 8:27 ¶ “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!
He is ‘full of grace and truth’:
- John 1:14 ¶ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
His love and faithfulness know no bounds:
- Psalm 36:5 Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.
His joy is full:
- Psalm 16:11 ¶ You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy.
He is rich in wisdom and knowledge, his judgements are unfathomable:
- Romans 11:33 ¶ Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways
To speak of God’s glory, therefore, is to speak of his fullness; in all his attributes he lacks nothing, being perfectly complete. He is, as it were, operating at maximum capacity. A glorious house is a full house; a glorious stomach is a full stomach; a glorious mind is a full mind; and a glorious God is a full God.
Next, notice the result of the revelation of God’s glory in Isaiah 6: ‘…The foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke’ (v. 4). Because God is glorious, because he is weighty in his abundance, his presence shakes whatever it touches:
- Exodus 19:18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.
- Psalm 68:7 O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, Selah 8 the earth quaked.
However, it is not only the temple, or the earth, that shakes when God reveals his weight; Isaiah himself is shaken: ‘Woe is me, for I am undone…’ (v. 5).
The first great test of your experience of the glory of God, therefore, is whether it has shaken you to the foundations. When such fullness intersects with sinful man, it undoes him from the inside out like an earthquake. This is why, in the presence of Jesus Christ, some men and women fell before him as though they were dead, some gave away the great majority of their wealth, some gave up their occupations, and all gave up their claims to greatness and personal glory. When you have experienced such weight, you realize that you yourself are light. ‘All have sinned,’ says the Apostle Paul, ‘and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Rom. 3:23). If you were put in the balance with God, the scale would tip dramatically, flinging you to a place that you do not want to be. You will either be shaken by his glory, or, ultimately, crushed by his glory.
From this context the gospel comes to us. The Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal God of glory, makes himself nothing in our place, that we might be weighed in the balance and want nothing. He ’empties himself’ that we, by faith, might be counted as though we lacked nothing. The great Heavyweight lives a life of glory, and dies the death of a sinner, that we lightweights might make weight, or measure up, through him; He gives up his honor that we might be counted as honorable and he gives up his riches that we might be rich in him:
- 2 Corinthians 8:9 ¶ For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
This is a heavyweight gospel, from a glorious God.
Yep, that pretty much sums it up. It really is that simple but at the same time He really really really is past finding out.