Trinity Sunday: Old Testament, Isaiah 6:1-8                                 

Isaiah 6:1-8

Each time this text rolls into our lectionary I have to pause. A great Reformed professor by the name of R. C. Sproul recorded his teaching on this text many years ago and I wore it out. The tapes that is. Some of you may actually remember what cassette tapes were. I’m old.

I am indebted to this dear saint, now with Christ, for that and many other teachings where he opened a larger world to me from the Bible than what I had been fed before “meeting” him. God be praised. In his lectures on this passage he highlighted a bit of the teaching pointing to God’s heavenly servants, the cherubim and seraphim. Here they are seen in their vocations giving praise, bowing in adoration and preparing a human servant of God with truth in the form of a hot coal.

Mysterious? Indeed. And I would point to the fact that as Christians in general and as Lutheran Christians in particular, perhaps a retrieval of mystery into our lives may be necessary these days. Cerebral we are in so many respects. And God be praised who gave us our minds to discern, ponder, and teach His Word. But there are things in that Word that are clearly beyond MERE human reason to grasp. The angels are one of those. Read our lesson several times and allow your mind, not to disengage, but to be further opened beyond its norms to behold a reality that exists moment by moment and day by day: the ministry of the holy angels.

And marvel dear Christian in regard to the angels, that just as for dear old Isaiah, “Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14). Thanks be to God for His servants and ours, the holy angels.