BEYOND YOUR CAPABILITY

Isaiah 6:1-7
Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust.

Isaiah’s Cleansing and Call

1 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. 2 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. 3 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!”

4 Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.

5 Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.”


Isaiah, upon seeing the majesty of the LORD, quickly realized that his sin … his lack of integrity … was his undoing. “It’s all over! I am doomed…”, he said. To be undone is to disintegrate. Isaiah experienced a personal disintegration in the face of God’s perfect integration.

To integrate something is to put something together in a unified whole. The word integrity suggests a person whose life is whole or wholesome … someone whose got it all together.

It took a touch from the LORD to put Isaiah back together. The same is true for you and me. It is beyond our personal capability to get our lives together. It takes the touch of the Master’s hand. It takes Jesus to be made whole.