Isaiah [Part 5] - Vision in the Holy of Holies

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom, we are continuing the study of the prophets. We're in Isaiah, and it's going slow. I thought for sure it would go much faster, but there are so many important things in Isaiah, I would say monumental chapters that you can't skip them. They are there, and they have influenced the worship of all of Judaism, and of Islam, and of Christianity. So many texts are from Isaiah that, I feel that okay, it takes more lessons, but I think that the goal is to inspire you, to inform you, to empower you, our dear brothers in Korea and around the world, to seek the Lord more, seek fellowship with the Lord, seek relationship with God, and try to understand how God works. Because if we understand how God works, maybe, maybe, God willing, we will also understand how we need to work in relationship to the almighty and most powerful force in our universe: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Father and the sender and resurrecter of Yeshua, who is sitting at His right hand right now.

We have a few scenes in the Bible that give us a glimpse what is going on in the other sphere, in another dimension, I would say. A dimension that we don't know so much about, even with all the science and with going with men to the moon and all the electronics that we all use. We still don't understand the divine dimension, but in Isaiah, we have chapter six, which is a monumental chapter. By monumental, I mean that it is a chapter that takes us into the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem and describes to us what is going on there in the very presence of the Lord. I'm getting goosebumps when I talk about it, literally a chill all over my body.

The chapter starts by giving us a date, giving us a time frame of this occasion. Because it's giving us a date, it makes it much more believable, much more realistic, much more inspiring, in my opinion. Chapter 6, verse 1:

Okay, Uzziah dies, and Isaiah goes into the temple, and apparently he goes into at least the holy room in the temple, maybe even to the Holy of Holies, and he sees His throne. And on that throne, the Lord sitting, high and lifted up, and He's wearing some kind of a robe that is flowing, filling, I imagine the floor space surrounding the throne where the Lord is sitting.

Now, I'm trying to be a rational man, and I'm trying to understand what it says here and believe every word of it without doubts. But, as far as I know, the Lord normally is in His heaven. It is not a common thing for us to understand and to read and to accept that God is dwelling inside a building made from stone, a place of worship for the nation of Israel in the city of Jerusalem. But being God, all-powerful and almighty, there is such a thing as holograms that look very real in our modern world. We can make a hologram out of everybody, or anybody, or anything, and it'll be four-dimensional. The hologram could turn, can function, can look real. I've seen some that look very real and talk.

So, I don't have a doubt that Isaiah is telling the truth, that he entered into the holy precinct of the temple and on the throne of God he sees the Lord, and he describes His clothing, and he describes the sitting, and that description is real. You know the setting that the inside the Holy place, there were the seraphim, their special angels with six wings, two above, two over the the face of the Lord, and two below. And these seraphim, and it says two cover the face, two cover the feet, and with two he flew, and one cries to another, the seraphim are talking to each other, praising God, and saying,

You know, we as Jewish disciples in the city of Jerusalem who worship traditionally and use the traditional prayer that is old as long before Yeshua, maybe even from the time of Ezra Nehemiah, most of our prayers. We repeat that "Holy, holy, holy" several times every worship service. That's verse 3 that we repeat several times in our prayers. But now, we're not the only one. The Catholics do it in the Mass, the Greek Orthodox, the Ethiopians, most Christians in the world repeat this "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord of hosts. The whole Earth is filled with His glory," repeated several times in their prayers, in the Greek, prayers it's called "Trisagion", the three holies.

The atmosphere in that place that Isaiah is found is electrical. The posts and the doors were shaken by the voice of him who cries out, and the house is filled with smoke, very mystical, very dramatic presence of the Lord. Now, I don't know if in Korea you have been in places that are dramatic, places of worship that are dramatic. I'm not talking about people falling on the floor and rolling around. I'm not talking about people shouting and screaming. That exists in Korea and everywhere else. I'm talking really dramatic places. I mean, if you ever go to Mount Athos in Greece, oh, the churches that are way up high on cliffs, straight up cliffs like huge towers not built by men, built by God. And on top of it, there is sometimes some monastery dedicated to some Greek Orthodox saint. And you go into these churches or to the place where John was in the island, and you go up to the cave that is supposed to be the cave where he lived for several months or years, and the atmosphere there is the same way. It's electrical.

So Isaiah is in there. He sees that. He hears the seraphim singing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole Earth is filled with His glory." And the first reaction of Isaiah and of everybody else that would be in that kind of a situation is, "O" and then fear. Why fear? You should rejoice. You're in the presence of the Lord. But the Lord is awesome, and even if you don't see His face, the very idea that you're in the presence of a power, of a person, of an entity that has created the heavens and the Earth, the sun, the moon, and this blue ball that is floating in space around the planets and around the sun. The very idea that you're in His presence, even if you don't see His face, is inspiring or excitement, fear. And the only thing that you want to do is just stay there and glorify God with your soul, with your body, with your voice, with your eyes, and with your whole being.

It's not a Hollywood style worship. He's there alone with the seraphim, with the presence of the Lord, and he's filled with awe. And his reaction is,

I'm falling apart. I think he felt it physically, not emotionally. Why?

You know, in the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, our congregation is the first one, I think in the world, the Messianic congregation, the first one in the world that started worshipping and fasting 25 hours on that Day of Atonement, on Yom Kippur. And we have a list of 150 sins that we read four times in these 25 hours. We're not allowed to write on our prayer books or in our Bibles, but I mentally mark all the sins that I remember and believe and fear that I have done this last year. And you know what? I would say that 98% of all the sins that I've committed, not in one year, almost every year, are sins of speaking, sins of the mouth, sins of gossip, sins of not being kind with your mouth, sins of not being respectful with your mouth, sins of speaking behind somebody's back, sins of not examining something before I open my mouth to make sure that it's right and it's true.

So Isaiah is standing there. He's a prophet. His task is to speak the word of God. And he's standing there in the midst of this scene and says, "Oh, I'm a man of unclean lips." That touches me. I hope it touches you too. Because I'm sure that most of us, as disciples of Christ, as disciples of Yeshua, we don't murder. We don't commit adultery. We don't, you know, steal. We don't kill. We don't do bad things on purpose. But yes, men who want clean lips, we should examine ourselves. We should try. And I do every year on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, examine myself and I mark mentally these 20, 30 sins of the mouth that are listed there. And I say, "Next year, I'm going to do better." And the truth is that some years I did better, and I hope next year I'll do better again. But it's not easy to control your tongue.

The letter of Jacob, of James, says that one of the hardest things is to control your mouth, and it is, whether you're a man or a woman. No, you men tend to, you know, accuse women of talking too much or talking a lot, and maybe statistically it may be true, but regarding being mean with your tongue, men are just as bad as anybody else. So Isaiah confesses his sin,

See, when you have an experience, a real spiritual experience, you feel that way. I can confess that I haven't had too many of those experiences of real spiritual experiences, but I've had in this nearly 60 years plus of being a believer and a Bible teacher and an evangelist and a pastor and a rabbi, whatever you want to call it. I've had a few, not many, less than the fingers on one hand in my lifetime, less than the fingers on one hand. But every time it shook me up like it shook Isaiah. And here comes God's help for Isaiah. One of the seraphim flies out of his position. They're angels, I said, with six wings,

And then the Lord says to Isaiah:

Very important word. "Hineni". It appears in Genesis, it appears in Exodus, it appears in Isaiah. It means, "Lord, I'm here. I'm ready. I'm willing. I am able. Take me. Send me. Choose me to be your servant." "Hineni". Very powerful word.

But I don't want to make this lesson too long, but I think that in some sense, in some sense, every believer that is sincere and godly, if he has in his heart this feeling that he's got to do something for God, that he's got to do something for the community, if he's got to do something for humanity, it's a call from God. It may not be as dramatic as Isaiah in the temple in Jerusalem, but it can be a dream. It can be the vision, not during your sleep, while you're awake. It can be a feeling in your heart that you need to do something with God and for God and for the people.

So Isaiah says,

Oh, you know how many songs are in the Protestant hymnals in every language that say, "I'm ready to go, God. Use me. Send me. Take me." Many songs, "Where He leads me, I will follow," famous Christian song. Well, we sing it, but do we mean it? We don't always mean it. And Isaiah turns to himself and to God and to the seraphim and he said: "Send me."

And God answers him:

This is in present tense, but it stays in present tense. It's true till today. People go to church. They give money in church. They sing. They take communion in church. But it's hard to grasp. It's hard to understand. It's hard to drink it and eat it, that the presence of the Lord is all around us 24/7. And if we're sensitive and we feel it, that would be wonderful. But the truth is, the people of Israel didn't.

You keep hearing the word of the Lord, but you don't understand. You keep seeing the works of the Lord, but you don't perceive what's going on. You're not there. Yeah, the continuation of the chapter is that God explains to him why they don't hear, why they don't see. It's because they need healing. Healing of the heart. We are commanded to circumcise our hearts in the New Testament, but the command comes from two places in the book of Deuteronomy. One in chapter 16 and one in chapter 30 of the book of Deuteronomy. The first one says, "You circumcise your hearts." The second one, when Moses is a little bit more ripe for it, he says, "Ah, God is going to circumcise your heart."

You've got to open your heart. You've got to open your will. You've got to open your desire to serve God, and He will circumcise your heart. It's not painful like the other kind of circumcision, but it is much more important and much more valuable to have your heart circumcised, touched by God, it will also be a healing of your soul.

And Isaiah asked God, "How long?" God gives him this horrible answer:

Horrible, horrible, because God is telling Isaiah that His prophecies, His ministry, His work is not going to work because the people are not going to change. And in the end, the promises that God made to Moses in the book of Leviticus, they're going to be fulfilled. The people are going to not listen to God, continue sinning, rejecting the authority of the almighty God. And in the end, He will have to destroy Jerusalem.

The good news is that He did it, and we are now in the second stage of the prophecy of Isaiah, of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and rebuilding of the land, and rebuilding and bringing the captives home from the exile. We saw this prophecy in the previous chapter where the captives from Babylon are going to come, singing and praising God, and returning and rebuilding the city. They did it once in the days of Ezra, Nehemiah, and they are doing it again according to the prophecy of Zechariah and Amos.

Yes, that's the glory of the Lord, folks, because He promises and He keeps His promises. And we are living in the land of Israel, the fulfillment of God's promises. May God bless all of you. Read the chapter, get inspired, examine yourselves, and say, "Hineni, Lord, I'm here. Take me."