Monday after the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on September 23, 2019 by under
Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-13 (NKJV)
6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one cried to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!”
4 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 So I said:
“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 my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth with it, and said:
“Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.”
8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?”
Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
9 And He said, “Go, and tell this people:
‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 “Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed.”
11 Then I said, “Lord, how long?”
And He answered:
“Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant, the houses are without a man, the land is utterly desolate,
12 the Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
13 But yet a tenth will be in it, and will return and be for consuming, as a terebinth tree or as an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down. So the holy seed shall be its stump.”
Devotion
The Apology of the Augsburg Confession offers this simple definition of sacrament: “rites which have the command of God and to which the promise of grace has been added” (XIII:3). The promise of grace must be heard, for it is the Word of God, but the rite is added that our eyes and hands may have something to grasp as proof of the promise. “Just as the Word enters the ears in order to strike hearts; so the rite itself meets the eyes, in order to move hearts” (Apology XIII:5).
In Isaiah 6, God forgives Isaiah’s sins by a sacramental act. First, the seraph takes the burning coal from the altar and touches Isaiah’s lips with it. This is the visible rite. Then the Word of promise is added to it: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away.”
This sacramental act prefigures the sacraments of the New Testament. In Baptism, water is applied to the body as a visible sign. Then the Word of promise is added—the invocation of the Triune God. The ordinary water becomes a sin-forgiving sacrament through the promise of the Word. Likewise, in the Lord’s Supper, ordinary bread and ordinary wine become a true communion with the Body and Blood of Christ through the gracious Word of the Lord.
We may marvel at Isaiah’s unique vision, but we receive the same gift from God in the Church: the forgiveness of sins through visible signs.
We pray: Keep, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy Church with Thy perpetual mercy; and because the frailty of man without Thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by Thy help from all things hurtful and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
