Here I Am, Day 1 — Fear of the Lord: High and Lifted Up (Isaiah 6:1–4)

Here I Am · Study 1 of 5 · Fear of the Lord

This is a five-part study through one chapter of the Bible, Isaiah 6. Each part has three sections, and you can take them in one sitting or spread them over a few days:

• 📖 Study: walk through the passage phrase by phrase: what the words mean, why they were written that way, and the truth underneath.
• ✍️ Journal: honest questions with room to write.
• 🛠️ Practice: small, concrete steps for the week.

Have a Bible, a pen and something to write in. Go slowly.

🗺️ Where this study fits

Isaiah 6 is one encounter with God that changes a man in five moves. Each study takes one of them.

See God. See yourself. Confess. Be cleansed. Say yes. This first study is about the start of everything: seeing who God really is.

📱 The picture we’ll use: your phone is your heart

In the Bible, your heart isn’t just your feelings. It’s your control center, the place where your choices get made. “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

So picture your heart as a phone. It has a passcode. Whoever has the passcode gets the final say. Every time a voice gets its way with you, it just used your passcode.

One guardrail: God doesn’t need your passcode to see in. He already sees your whole heart (Psalm 139; Hebrews 4:13). The question this study asks is different: does He have the final say?

📜 Read it slowly

Read the passage out loud once before you go any further. Notice what Isaiah sees, what he hears, and what he feels.

🏚️ Step 1 · The year the steady king died

Isaiah 6 doesn’t come out of nowhere. Chapters 1 to 5 are hard reading: injustice, empty religion and pride, laid out in detail. Chapter 5 ends with six “woes,” six times Isaiah says “woe to you” to the people around him (5:8, 11, 18, 20, 21, 22). Keep that in mind. In verse 5, Isaiah is going to say “woe” one more time, and this time it’s about himself.

Then there’s the date: “the year that King Uzziah died.” Uzziah reigned about 52 years (2 Chronicles 26). For most people he was the only king they had ever known. He started well and grew strong, then he grew proud. He walked into the temple to burn incense, a job God had given only to the priests, and he was struck with leprosy on the spot. He lived the rest of his life in isolation and died around 740 BC.

So picture the moment. The steady king is gone. Nobody knows what comes next. And the last thing everyone remembers about that king is that he tried to take a holy place that wasn’t his. In that year, Isaiah sees the real King, sitting in the holy place, and nothing can touch Him.

👑 Step 2 · Someone is on the throne

“I saw the Lord sitting on a throne.” The word for Lord here is Adonai: master, the one in charge. And notice His posture. He is sitting. In the ancient world a king sat to rule. Sitting means settled, unhurried, in control. Everyone else in this scene stands. Only God sits.

Notice too what Isaiah doesn’t describe. He tells us about a throne, a robe, attendants and smoke. He never describes God’s face. That restraint is part of the message. He saw enough to be undone, but not enough to put God in a box.

⬆️ Step 3 · Higher than every other voice

“High and lifted up” is two Hebrew words for height stacked together, ram ve-nissa. It isn’t just “tall.” It’s “exalted and raised up,” higher than anything around Him.

Here’s something easy to miss. Isaiah uses that same pair of words for the suffering Servant: “He will be exalted and lifted up, and will be very high” (Isaiah 52:13), right before the description of the Servant who is pierced for our transgressions in chapter 53. In John 12, Jesus says, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32), speaking about the cross. A few verses later John quotes Isaiah 6 and says, “Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory, and spoke of him” (John 12:41), meaning Jesus.

So the King who is high and lifted up on the throne is the same One who was lifted up on a cross. His greatness and His love are not two different things.

👘 Step 4 · Just the hem fills the room

“His train filled the temple.” The word translated “train” is shul, the hem or edge of a robe. The word for temple, hekal, can also mean palace, so think royal throne room. The point is scale. Just the edge of His clothing fills the entire building. If the hem fills the house, what must He be like?

🔥 Step 5 · The burning ones cover their faces

“Seraphim” comes from the Hebrew saraph, “to burn.” These are the burning ones. This is the only place in the Old Testament where the word is used for heavenly beings, so it’s wise not to build big theories about them. What matters is what they do with their six wings:

• Two cover the face. They don’t look straight at God. That’s reverence.
• Two cover the feet. Most likely humility and modesty in His presence.
• Two fly. They’re ready to move the moment He sends them.

Here’s the striking part: these beings have never sinned. They have nothing to be ashamed of, and they still cover themselves in His presence. That’s what real holiness does to anyone near it, and it sets up Isaiah’s reaction in verse 5. It’s also worth noticing, though the text doesn’t make a rule of it, that four wings are for covering and two are for flying. Worship comes before work.

✨ Step 6 · Holy, holy, holy

Hebrew doesn’t have a word for “most.” When it wants to say something is the ultimate, it repeats it. Here the seraphim say holy three times, the strongest form the language has. Nowhere else does the Bible repeat one of God’s qualities three times like this. Not “love, love, love.” Not “power, power, power.” Holy.

The Hebrew word is qadosh. Its basic meaning is set apart: other, in a category by Himself. God isn’t a bigger, better version of us. And from verse 5 we learn holiness includes moral purity too, because Isaiah’s first reaction is about his own uncleanness. Hannah prayed it this way: “There is no one as holy as Yahweh, for there is no one besides you, nor is there any rock like our God” (1 Samuel 2:2).

Now look at what the seraphim actually say. In this whole scene, this cry is the only thing that comes out of their mouths, and every word of it is about God. Nothing about themselves, nothing about Isaiah, nothing about the nation’s problems. The only voice in their heads is God. They are surrounded by Him.

This vision shaped Isaiah’s whole life. He calls God “the Holy One of Israel” about 25 times in his book, far more than any other Old Testament writer.

A careful note: many Christians hear an echo of the Trinity in “holy, holy, holy,” and it’s a beautiful thought. But the main reason for the repetition is intensity, the Hebrew way of saying “most holy.” It’s best not to use this verse as proof of the Trinity.

🌍 Step 7 · The whole earth is full of His glory

“Yahweh of Armies” (YHWH tseva’ot, often translated “Lord of Hosts”) means the commander of all the armies of heaven. “Glory” is kavod, a word built on the idea of weight. God’s glory is His weight, the realness of who He is.

Notice the contrast with verse 1. His hem fills the temple. His glory fills the whole earth. God isn’t stuck in a building. He isn’t only present at church or in special places. Every place is full of Him, whether people notice or not.

🌫️ Step 8 · The doorposts shook

The “foundations of the thresholds” are the heavy stone sockets at the base of the doorways, the parts that hold a building together. They shake at the sound of the seraphim’s voice. The building reacts before Isaiah does. Creation responds to God’s holiness first.

Then smoke fills the house. Every time this happens in the Bible, it’s God’s presence: on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:18), at the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34–35) and at Solomon’s temple, where the priests couldn’t even stand to do their work (1 Kings 8:10–11). Smoke does two things at once. It shows God is there, and it hides Him.

🧭 Putting it together · What is the fear of the Lord?

Put the four verses together and you get the Bible’s picture of the fear of the Lord. It isn’t being scared that God will hurt you. Look at the response in the room: covering, crying out, trembling. That’s awe: what happens when you finally see Him as He is, and everything else gets resized. And it comes with trust. The God who makes the doorposts shake is the God who draws near (Psalm 25:14).

“The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom. The knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10). Not the advanced class. The starting point.

Isaiah ties it directly to the fear of people. Two chapters later God tells him, “Don’t fear their threats or be terrorized. Yahweh of Armies is who you must respect as holy. He is the one you must fear. He is the one you must dread” (Isaiah 8:12–13). That’s the trade. Fear Him, and you stop being run by everyone else.

You see the same trade in Exodus: “the midwives feared God, and didn’t do what the king of Egypt commanded them” (Exodus 1:17). Two women with no power said no to Pharaoh, because Someone was bigger. And Proverbs puts it in one line: “The fear of man proves to be a snare, but whoever puts his trust in Yahweh is kept safe” (Proverbs 29:25).

👑🐑 Two kings, two voices: Saul and David

The Bible shows the fear of the Lord, and its opposite, through two kings. Both had real authority. They differed in whose voice had the final say.

🐑 Saul: “I obeyed”

God told King Saul to destroy the Amalekites completely, animals included. Saul kept the best. Then he greeted the prophet Samuel as if nothing had happened:

Samuel’s question is almost funny: if you obeyed, why can I hear sheep? The animals that should be gone are standing right there making noise. In Hebrew, “bleating” is literally the voice (qol) of the sheep. That word runs through the whole chapter. Saul claims he obeyed Yahweh’s voice. Samuel hears a different voice.

👉 Saul: “The people made me”

Notice three things. First, the Hebrew word for “feared” in verse 24 (yare) is the same family of words used for the fear of the Lord. Saul didn’t lack fear. He feared the wrong one. Second, the word for “obey” in verse 22 is shama, “to hear,” the same word as “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4). In the Bible, really hearing God means doing what He says. Third, verse 30: even while confessing, Saul asks to be honored in front of the crowd. He had a king’s authority, but the crowd had his passcode.

❤️ David: a heart after God

David wasn’t perfect. He failed badly, and he did fear people at times. But his pattern was different: again and again, before he moved, he asked God first.

🪨 David: when the crowd turned

This is the clearest mirror of Saul. Saul, with the people pressing him, obeyed their voice. David, with the people ready to stone him, went to God’s voice. Same pressure, different passcode.

🚫 What this passage doesn’t say

• It doesn’t say God only shows up in a crisis. It gives a date, not a formula.
• It doesn’t give us a full map of angels. Don’t build big theories on the wings.
• It doesn’t teach fear of punishment. The very next verses bring cleansing.
• It doesn’t say other people’s voices are bad. Wise advice is a gift (Proverbs 11:14). People can speak into your life. They just don’t get the final say.

This study stops at verse 4 on purpose, but the story doesn’t. Isaiah is about to feel undone (verse 5), and then mercy is going to fly toward him (verses 6–7). The God you fear is the God who cleanses. Hold on to that.

Find a quiet place. Write honestly; nobody else needs to read this. Take your time with each question. If one hits hard, stay there instead of rushing on.

Small steps, done for a week, change a heart more than one big moment. Check them off as you go.

• 🌅 Face covered first. Before you check a single message in the morning, spend five minutes with Isaiah 6:1–4. No requests, no to-do list. Just look at who He is. Then get up and fly.
• 🗣️ Answer the voice. When a loud voice shows up in your head, answer it with one line from the passage: “High and lifted up.” “The throne is occupied.” “Holy, holy, holy.”
• 🙋 Ask first, like David. Before one real decision this week, stop and pray: “Lord, what do You say?” Write down what you sense, check it against Scripture, and talk it through with someone wise.
• 🎯 Hand one decision over. Pick one decision this week that you’ll make by what God says, not by what your loudest voice says.
• 📍 Full of His glory. Pick one ordinary place you’ll be this week. When you get there, say quietly, “This place is full of His glory.”
• 👥 Tell one person. Share your loudest voice and your one decision with someone you trust. Ask them to pray one sentence for you, not give advice.

📚 Go deeper

• Isaiah 5: read the six woes, then read 6:5.
• 2 Chronicles 26: Uzziah’s whole story.
• 1 Samuel 15 and 1 Samuel 30: Saul and David, side by side.
• Exodus 1:15–21: the midwives who feared God more than Pharaoh.
• John 12:32–41: the King who was lifted up.
• Revelation 4:8: the same cry, still going.

🗓️ The five studies

The thread under all five: God is my Father. I am His child. So, be holy as He is holy.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). Words in [brackets] are added to show who is speaking. Hebrew notes are simplified; for more depth see John Oswalt’s or Alec Motyer’s commentaries on Isaiah.