The Vision of Immanuel

Passage: Isaiah 6:1-13

What is the most awe inspiring thing you have ever seen or heard or witnessed?

How about our sanctuary decorated for Advent. We can stand in awe before the Grand Canyon or the Grand Tetons or Banff and Lake Louise. We can listen in awe to the roar of the ocean in a storm or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. We can be amazed at pictures of the splendor of a galaxy or the aurora borealis. What about the terrifying power of a great flood, a forest fire, a lightning storm, an avalanche, a tornado? Is anything more moving than the birth of a baby?
What have you experienced that knocked you out of your senses?
What Isaiah saw knocked him out of his senses. Encounters with God will do that. There is nothing else in the universe like it. It was a whole body experience.

He saw the Lord high and lifted up.
He heard the seraphim.
He felt the foundations shaking.
He smelled the smoke.
He trembled in the depths of his soul.
He felt the burning coals.
He heard the voice of the Lord.

Are you glad you can only read about this vision? Are you glad this was Isaiah and not you? Are we like the children of Israel when they saw Moses covered in glory as he came down from Mt. Sinai and were afraid to come near him and wanted him to stay between them and God?