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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Isaiah's Vision and Commission (Isaiah 6 and Jesus)


the death of king Uzziah prepares the way for Isaiah to see God’s vision. He saw the seraphim with six wings praising “Holy, Holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” The function of threefold holy (the tri-agion) suggests “the strongest form of the superlative in Hebrew” which indicates God as the most holy and godly of all the gods (Oswalt, Isaiah 1-39, 181). God’s holiness leads to self-despair of Isaiah. He began to aware of his uncleanness, which reflects the condition of the nation as a whole. Isaiah did not ask for mercy. But God showed his mercy. His lip was cleansed, his guilt is taken away and his sin atoned for. This grace finally makes possible to recognize the possibility of service to God. Isaiah voluntarily accepts God’s commission. He is commissioned to be God’s instrument for hiding the truth from an unreceptive people. Verses 9-10 we see human’s outer faculties (hearing/seeing) and inner faculties (understanding/discerning). All of them are incapable and unreceptive to the truth. In verse 10 one can observe “rounded structure” (heart-ears-eyes; eyes-ears-heart), which emphasizes total inability to comprehend. To such kind of people he is commissioned to preach and warn. How long? God replied he must continue until the cities are desolate (v.11) and the people have gone into exile (v.12).
Isaiah 6:9-10 is quoted by Matthew 13:14-16. Why would Jesus quote this text?  In Matthew 13, when Jesus talks about the parable of the Sower, he finishes his parable with this statement: “He who has ears, let him here.”Then the disciples asked him why he spoke to them in parables. Jesus answered: he spoke to them with parable because “seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear (Mt.13:13).”It implies that the people’s own unbelief is the cause of their spiritual blindness (to discern the secrets of the kingdom of God).  And Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:9,10 and declares its fulfillment in his own people (Mt. 13:14-15).
And John also states that people could not believe because “He (God) has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn and I would hear them” (John 12:40; quoted from Isaiah 6:10). This statement conveys the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy and stress “the sovereign plan of God in his judicial hardening of Israel.” (The McArthur Study Bible, “John 12:40” 1569). Jesus also affirms that Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke on him. Who is “him?” we can assume that John is trying to assert that Jesus is God’s glory. Isaiah saw his (God’s) glory namely Christ. So “him” refers to God’s glory that is Jesus Christ. And Jesus again states that even though many authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it so that they would not be put out of the synagogue because they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God (vv.42-43). Jesus is saying that some eyes and hearts are opened up and believed in him, but less courageous and for the love of praise from men, they failed to grasp “the powerful new birth that could make them children of God and enable them to enter the messianic kingdom” (Carson, The Gospel According to John, 450-1). 

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