Bible Study on Isaiah 6, verses 5 to 8, Here am I, send me.

 

Isaiah 6:5 ¶  Then said I, 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. 6  Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 7  And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. 8  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 did not feel himself worthy to be in the Lord’s presence, acknowledging his wretched state in the presence of the King of the Universe.

 

Paul would write of his inadequacies.

 

Romans 7:18  For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 19  For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. 20  Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 21  I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. 22  For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23  But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24  O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 25  I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

 

But we all stand before our God in a wretched state, undone, of a people who have sinned against the Lord God. Still, in His mercy He came to us anyway.

 

Romans 5:8  But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

 

And while this seraphim symbolically cleansed Isaiah’s unclean lips it is Christ who makes us whole.

 

2Timothy 1:9  Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,

 

This purging of Isaiah’s sin is a foreshadowing of what Christ will do. Note that it is God who does the cleansing, nothing Isaiah did.

 

It is then that Isaiah is ready and it is then that he is willing to serve God. God asks a rhetorical question, who will I send, and Isaiah answers what every Christian must answer to God’s calling on their lives, Here am I; send me.