In the Year King Uzziah Died

Sermon 432 St. Martin’s 186 (Riverway) 9/27/26

Isaiah 6:1-8

O Lord of Hosts, you are the same God who cleansed the lips of the prophet Isaiah with a live coal. Cleanse now my lips that I may fitly proclaim your Holy Gospel through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Uzziah’s Death

That is the prayer Eric Priest usually says before he preaches, and I've wanted to steal it from him for years. Today is the day I break the eighth commandment, because that prayer refers to our Old Testament reading from Isaiah.

Both the prayer and the passage are about a fiery coal that comes from a fiery God. Isaiah’s grand vision is so memorable because it is so strange, so fantastical.

It’s as if the prophet is grasping for words to describe the indescribable: “There was a throne,” he says, “And I saw something like winged serpents set aflame, and the whole structure shook to its foundation at their hymn of praise. There was incense too, pouring in from everywhere, as the Holy One sat in his temple.”

This vision is otherworldly, beyond our wildest imaginations, and yet if you look closely you realize that it begins in a very worldly way. It starts with an almost throwaway line:

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.” 

Compared with everything that follows in the vision, it’s easy to gloss over this small detail. But Isaiah felt it was important to mention the events surrounding his encounter with God—because God’s timing is never random. 

The Lord of Hosts showed up when Isaiah and the nation were grappling with an uncertain future and desperately searching for answers.

You see, King Uzziah was one of the good ones (for the most part). The kingdom of Judah had some pretty bad rulers in its past, but Uzziah was considered to be the best since King Solomon.

He could do a little of everything; he was a solid administrator and a gifted military leader. He ruled for 52 years, taking the throne at just 16 years old! In that time, he pushed back the Philistines, built strong towers throughout Jerusalem, and rebuilt entire villages.[i] 

He was seen as the nation's father figure, providing stability in an unstable time. When he died, people were in crisis because he was the only king most of them had ever known.

There was sorrow but also fear.

Uzziah’s death created a crisis of uncertainty about the kingdom’s future. At that time, the Assyrian Empire was expanding its military campaigns into the region. They were growing ever stronger, knocking off lesser kingdoms one at a time, subjugating and deporting large numbers of the population, and doing it with gleeful violence. 

The people of Judah knew that the mighty Assyrians would come knocking at Jerusalem’s gates sooner or later, and as Uzziah drew his last breath, so did the people’s hope.

The prophet Isaiah, like his countrymen, and like so many in human history, looked out at an uncertain future and feared what it meant for them, their families, and everything they held dear.

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We’ve all likely experienced a moment that reshapes how we think about our future. We had assumed life’s path was leading one way, but then it suddenly made a dramatic turn. We must reckon with a new path, a new reality we hadn't prepared for. And at least in the moment, it can heighten our sense of fear because we realize that we are not in control.  

That existential angst about an uncertain future, not knowing what it will mean for ourselves, our families, and communities, is an all-too-human feeling, and it’s summed up in that throwaway line, “In the year that King Uzziah died.”

Isaiah might as well have said, “In the year that everything changed, and no one knew what would come next.”

But he didn’t say that. Instead, Isaiah said, “In that year…I saw the Lord.”

God’s Answer to Crisis

In their hour of confusion, uncertainty, and fear, God did not keep silent. He had been there all along and had blessed Uzziah’s work. But with the king’s death, the people needed a reminder of who was in charge and who would be their guardian and sure defense as the Assyrians marched in.

Who was going to fill Judah’s leadership gap? The Lord of Hosts.

That seems to be why God appeared to Isaiah in such a dramatic fashion. God wanted this experience to sink deep into Isaiah’s bones for the rest of his days, so that whenever he became anxious about the future again, he would remember (with all five of his senses) God’s answer.

The building shaking, the incense billowing, the seraphim crying out in worship, “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh. Holy, Holy, Holy.” The Lord who created all things, sustains all things, will judge all things, was Lord even in those trying times.

The future may have been uncertain to the prophet, but it was not to God.

It’s no wonder that Isaiah became aware of himself halfway through this vision. He was a mortal in the presence of the Eternal God. Notice that he doesn’t even try to cry out for help. Rather, he says, “Woe is me. I’m ruined.”

No one can see God and live, and though the smoke in the Temple is meant to veil the fullness of God’s glory, Isaiah is certain that he is a dead man. He is unclean, his lips are unworthy to proclaim what he has seen, and he is among a people of unclean lips.

Isaiah assumes Judgment Day has come early for him, and this is the end.

But there is a pattern here.

God was not required to grant Isaiah a vision, but he did anyway. Isaiah did not ask to be purified. He just said, “This is it! I’m going to be obliterated by God’s holiness.”

Yet a fiery seraph takes a fiery coal and touches Isaiah’s lips, and for just a moment, this heavenly being stops praising God and says to the mortal, “Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

God acted when Isaiah needed him most, but not at all how he expected.

God’s Call

And that decisive action of God changes Isaiah. How could it not? It changes his understanding of God, God’s plan for himself and the nation’s future, and he realizes it demands the only worthy response there is: faith.

Faith that the One who sits upon the throne is worthy of unending praise. Faith that the true king of the world is not silent to the needs of his people. Faith that the principalities and powers cannot compare to his dominion that is from everlasting. And faith that, as unworthy as we are, God’s call to deep and abiding life in him can be for us, too.

“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” With sparks coming off his lips, Isaiah is bold enough to respond, “Send me.”

What a remarkable transformation, and all because of the power of God. And it’s for us too.

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As one commentator put it, “Having believed with certainty that he was about to be crushed into non-existence by the very holiness of God and having received an unsought for, and unmerited, complete cleansing, what else would [Isaiah] rather do than hurl himself into God’s service?”

Because “those who need to be coerced [into God’s saving mission] are perhaps too little aware of the immensity of God’s grace toward them.”[ii]

My friends, are you aware of God’s grace toward you? 

The Gospel is especially for those who know they have unclean lips and that only God can purify them. The Good News boldly proclaims hope to the hopeless, salvation to the sinful, and grace that transforms all who put their trust in God.

And how do we know this?

Because God not only appeared to Isaiah in the year that Uzziah died, but also when Caesar Augustus ruled the empire, and Quirinius was governor of Syria. God could not be contained in the Temple—he became one of us. And he is present even now.

So the prayer I began this sermon with is for each of us who knows God’s grace is for us too, and can boldly say, in our time, we have seen the Lord.

O Lord God of Hosts, you are the same God who cleansed the lips of the prophet Isaiah with a live coal. Cleanse now our lips that we may fitly proclaim your Holy Gospel to a world shaken by fear and in need of your grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[i] 2 Chron 26

[ii] The Book of Isaiah, Ch. 1-39. John Oswalt. Pg.186.

Photo by Enache Georgiana on Unsplash