“Bible places: Heaven’s throne room”
Isaiah 6:1
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Buckingham Palace, in London, England, is not only a major tourist destination and a focal point for national joy and mourning, it’s also the home of the queen. It’s been that way for nearly two hundred years, since 1837.
And it’s big. Really big. While most of our homes have anywhere between five and ten rooms, Buckingham Palace has 775--that’s 19 State rooms, 52 Royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices, and 78 bathrooms. But who’s counting?
And among those large and beautifully decorated guest rooms, bedrooms, and State rooms, there’s also a room called the throne room. It’s where the Queen hosts official court ceremonies and entertains important guests. It’s also where the royals take their official wedding photographs.
But England isn’t the only nation with a throne room. China has one in its “Forbidden City,” and so does Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain. And for years, even the state of Hawaii had one too. It’s where King Kalakaua and Queen Kapiolani entertained their most important guests.
And, not surprisingly, our God has one too. Turn with me to our Old Testament reading for today, to page 726. I’ll start where it says, “Isaiah’s Vision of the Lord,” Isaiah chapter 6, verse 1: “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said; ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!’ And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.”
“In the year that King Uzziah died,” it said. Who was King Uzziah?
He took the throne when he was only sixteen, and reigned for fifty-two years. And he was a good king, one of the best kings the kingdom of Judah ever knew. He not only conquered the Philistines and the Ammonites, he made his country stronger than it had ever been before. The book of II Chronicles says: “His name spread abroad, even to the border of Egypt, for he became very strong.”
He built towers in his capital city, Jerusalem, and even out in the wilderness. He dug cisterns, groomed fields, and raised cattle. And he fitted his army of three hundred thousand with shields, spears, and helmets, not to mention coats of mail, bows, and stones for slinging.
But somewhere, sometime, something changed. The Bible says, “But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction.”
And just as soon as he strutted into the temple to burn incense on the altar of the Lord, something only priests should do, the Lord struck him with leprosy, a disease that eventually took his life.
So now that Uzziah was dead, what would happen to the kingdom of Judah? Would there be all out war or economic depression? Their world was literally falling apart.
Even more, a priest named Isaiah was not only a minister to political leaders, he had been a close, personal friend. To lose Uzziah touched him personally. It cut him deep.
So that’s why Isaiah went to the temple one day to be with God, to wrestle with his doubts and fears, and to better understand his calling and his purpose in life. And that’s when God appeared to him in a vision.
And that’s why he wrote in verse 1: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!’”
“The Lord was seated on His throne,” the Bible says.
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but whenever the Bible gives us a glimpse of God in heaven, we never see Him with His feet up, leaning back in a rocking chair. And neither do we see Him or wringing His hands at wits’ end, worrying about what the future might bring. Heaven is not coming apart at the seams, barely holding out against its attackers. Instead, as God sits on His throne, all is at peace and under absolute control.
How good it is to know that, no matter what, the Lord is on His throne. Can I say that again? No matter what, the Lord is on His throne.
He was on His throne when His voice first thundered through the emptiness and said, “Let there be light,” and spoke the universe into existence. He was on His throne when the Greeks, Romans, Persians and Assyrians forged kingdoms. He was on His throne when a philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche wrote back in 1882, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed Him.” And He was on His throne when men waged world wars.
Think about it. Fifty years from now, there will not be one single head of state in all the world who will still sit on his throne. And in a hundred years, all seven billion of us will be gone and another seven billion will inhabit planet earth instead.
But God will still be on His throne. In spite of terrorism, threats of war, crime, violence, moral depravity, gangs and drugs, God is on His throne. He is in control.
And as the Lord is on His throne, what do the angels cry? “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.”
Notice they didn’t simply say He is “holy,” or even “holy, holy.” They said He’s holy, holy, holy! He’s the epitome of holiness. There’s no one like Him.
As the psalmist wrote in Psalm 93: “The Lord reigns; He is robed in majesty...Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!” And Moses wrote in Exodus 15: “Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”
And who was it that knelt before Him? A man, a priest named Isaiah.
For as popular as the Bible is, you would think we would find more compelling and heroic characters, people we want to be like and model our lives after.
But if truth be known, the Bible is a collection of men with faults. When God called Moses from the burning bush, he said he couldn’t speak. When the Lord sent Jonah to preach to Nineveh, he got in a boat and went the other way. And when the Lord asked Peter, James and John to watch and pray, every one of them fell asleep.
So it was for Isaiah. In fact, when the Lord called him, Isaiah said in verse 5, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for 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!”
Still, God is on His throne, and because He is, there is peace.
In his book, I’m Okay! Honest!, author Philip Yancey tells of an evening in February of 2007, when he was driving his Ford Explorer from Los Alamos, New Mexico to his home in Denver. He was thinking about his wife and the wedding of one of their friends that they planned to attend in a few days.
But in the fading light, he didn’t notice a sharp left curve that lay just up ahead.
He describes the moment: “As best as I can reconstruct what happened, my tire slipped off the edge of the asphalt onto the dirt. That started the Explorer rolling sideways, at least three times and probably more. Amazingly, the vehicle stopped right side up. All the windows were blown out, and skis, boots, laptop computer, and suitcases were strewn over a hundred feet in the dirt.”
When he was taken to a hospital an hour away, the emergency room surgeon told him the accident had pulverized one of his vertebrae, likely puncturing critical arteries that served his brain.
Just hours before, he was on his way home to his wife of thirty-seven years. Now he was alone in a small community hospital, wondering if he would live beyond the next few minutes.
That’s how it happens. You go through life with its predictable rhythm, when suddenly you’re sideswiped by a crisis. Things that were important just minutes before, mean practically nothing now.
The telephone rings and you answer, with no idea what is about to happen to your life. Just as soon as you say, “hello,” the caller tells you the news. And you stand there in numb disbelief to hear that one of your most cherished loved ones in all the world is suddenly gone. You never even had the chance to say goodbye.
Or there’s a knock on your door and you open it to find a man who calls your name, then hands you a legal document and a clipboard with a place to sign. You scribble your name and shut the door.
What do you do when your world falls apart? Where do you go when you’re weak, vulnerable, and afraid?
What did Isaiah do? He went to the temple, and there he saw God seated on His throne. And there with God on His throne, all was at peace and under absolute control.
One more thing. Back in 2008, when the 90 year-old king of Otuam, Ghana died, the elders did what they’ve always done--they performed a ritual to determine who would serve as the next king. They prayed and they poured schnapps on the ground, while they read the name of the king’s twenty-five relatives. Then when steam rose up from the ground, the name that they were reading at that moment would be the new king.
That’s when they happened to read the name of Peggielene, the king’s niece, a devout Christian who lived in Silver Spring, Maryland. Upon her coronation, she was given the name Nana Amuah-Afenyi IV. If that’s too much for you, you can just call her King Peggy for short.
Though she plans to return, someday, to Guana, where she’ll have the power to resolve disputes, appoint elders, and manage more than a thousand acres of family-owned land, at the moment, she still lives in a one-bedroom condo and works as a secretary at the Embassy in Washington, D.C. And there she types letters, books appointments, and answers the phone. She even drives her own car and folds her own laundry.
You can read her story in her book, King Peggy.
She says, “I’m a big-time king, you know.”
And so are we. That is, after all, what Peter once wrote in his first epistle: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” And he wrote: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
In the words of Psalm 100: “For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.”
You have blessed us, dear Father, more than we could ever understand. Help us to rest calmly and confidently, knowing that You are God and You are good, for Jesus’ sake. Amen