This morning we are going to look at a deeply heart-felt prayer from the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah. As I read it for you perhaps you’ll recognize that his longing for God to come and stir up God’s people of his day is a longing that many of us are also feeling deep down inside. And perhaps one of the most important preparations that we can make to be ready for the celebration of Christmas, the birth of Jesus, is to get in touch with why we need him so much.
I encourage you to open up one of the pew Bibles and have it open in front of you as we talk about it. You’ll find it on page 694. Listen to the cry of Isaiah’s heart as he pours out his heart to God, as recorded for us in Isaiah 64:1-12.
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in your ways.
But you were angry, and we sinned;
because you hid yourself we transgressed.
We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls on your name,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
Yet, O LORD, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD,
and do not remember iniquity forever.
Now consider, we are all your people.
Your holy cities have become a wilderness,
Zion has become a wilderness,
Jerusalem a desolation.
Our holy and beautiful house,
where our ancestors praised you,
has been burned by fire,
and all our pleasant places have become ruins.
After all this, will you restrain yourself, O LORD?
Will you keep silent, and punish us so severely?”
Can you feel the desperation in Isaiah’s prayer? He’s serious, isn’t he?
Why was Isaiah feeling like God was so far away? Why was he so concerned about his nation? This passage is one of those where the scholars disagree as to the precise moment in Israel’s history that Isaiah was experiencing here. But the broad picture is clear enough. Isaiah lived well past the glory days of Israel, the days of King David or King Solomon, when they were secure and prosperous and God’s blessings were evident all around them.
Isaiah lived in a much later time, when generations of ungodly kings had led the people astray, when people had turned from the living God to all sorts of other religions that didn’t have such high moral requirements. It was a time when the seeds of moral laxness had had time to produce the fruit of social injustice and violence. It was a time when God could no longer in good conscience bless what Israel was doing, and they had been attacked and invaded and plundered again and again by enemies. And Isaiah was one of the few people who even realized that the problem was that the people had abandoned their God. And now God seemed so far away, as if God had abandoned the earth and was hiding up somewhere behind the clouds.
In verse 5 of our passage, he said it out; it felt like God was hiding from them. In verse 6, as he looked at the people of his country, he could see that they were unclean, morally polluted. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” In verse 7, they didn’t even have the sense anymore to go looking for God or calling out to God. “There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you.” In verses 10 and 11, Israel’s cities and even the great temple itself had been plundered and burned and laid desolate.
And where was God? Was he going to come and bless them again? Who else could they turn to? But how could he expect God to bless people who had so disobeyed? How in the world could they get out of this mess?
Can we identify with some of Isaiah’s feelings? Our situation has some obvious differences. Our cities aren’t in ruins. They are booming. We are cruising along with the best economy in the history of the world. We’ve had 9 years of incredible profits on Wall Street. We’re about as close as you can get to full employment. There is no hint of anyone on the horizon who poses a real threat of invading our cities. Materially, we have it great.
But God feels so far away to so many Americans today. There has been an avalanche of books on all sorts of spirituality, often written and read by people who have even given up on Christian understandings of God.
We have all heard conversations where one person talks about God acting in their lives, whether through healing, or comforting them or giving them insight to understand what to do, and some in the group will just look at them like they have lost their senses. How can you talk about God?
How much the church needs to be able to show the world that God is real and God makes all the difference in life, but so often the words are powerless and people don’t hear them.
I hear frequently of people who want to attend church more often, want to read their Bibles, want to know God, but they are just so tied up in the rat race or in some sort of self-indulgence that they just can’t break free. They are enslaved. They need God’s power to get out.
We are now in the time of year when we feel the pull of the rat race the most. The stores are pulling out all the stops to get us to buy, buy, buy, and party, party, party. They want to spin us around in the rat race until every coin has spun out of our pockets.
And yet, here we are, preparing for the 2,000th anniversary of the coming of Jesus. And we so much need to take time to slow down and listen to our hearts and listen to God. Can you feel the two sides pulling you apart? Which side is winning with you so far? Are you more in the shop ‘til you drop mindset, or the Silent Night, Holy night mindset today?
And we live in a time that is so hard on churches. Out culture is evolving so rapidly. Churches are caught between the familiar traditions of how things used to be and the challenges of how things need to become. Music styles are changing. New technologies are popping up every month. The world economy is going through major shifts with huge impacts on our families. Where is God in the midst of all this? If there is any time when the world needs to see that there is a God who can guide us through the chaos, a God who can help us withstand the pressures, a God who can heal the hearts of the victims of rapid change, that time is now. And yet most churches are struggling just to hang on to their own members and their own youth, let alone address the great issues of our day.
We need God. We need to come to the place where we dare to pray great prayers and trust that God’s hand will be moved. We need to come to the place where God is so real in our hearts that we can talk freely and convincingly of what we know ourselves to be true. We need to come to the place where we will see God’s power moving among us, healing broken hearts, setting free those who are caught in the rat race. We need to come to the place where the worship of God will permeate all of our lives. We’re not called just to keep the church alive, we are called to turn the world upside down. And we cannot manufacture that on our own. We need God. And let’s not mess around with this, God, just tear open the heavens and come and save us!
Is there any hope? Isaiah listed in his prayer three grounds for hope. As we prepare to celebrate the moment, 2,000 years ago, when God did a great thing on earth and Jesus was born, let’s hang on to Isaiah’s grounds for hope and dare to believe that God can come to us in our need in a powerful way, too.
Where did Isaiah see hope? Where can we find hope?
In verse 3, Isaiah reminded himself of God’s mighty deeds in the past, the exodus from slavery in Egypt, the giving of the Ten Commandments. When we take regular time to read our Bibles and remind ourselves of what God has done in the past and what God has promised to do, then our hope begins to grow, our lives begin to change into lives that God can bless. It can happen again.
In verse 4, Isaiah reminded himself that God is a God who works for those who wait for him. It’s so easy for us to just decide to do this program or that as a quick response to something that bothers us. How many different campaigns have you seen come and go in the church that didn’t really change much of anything? That’s what happens when we don’t wait for God, when we just jump in and try to do it alone. But here is Isaiah’s statement that God works for those who wait for him. Are we listening for God’s leading? Are we holding back until we are sure we are doing the right thing? That’s a whole lot more effective than just burning off energy running around in circles without God’s direction and blessing.
And then, in verse 8, Isaiah reminds himself that God is our Father. He sees us as his family. Sure, he has to be stern with us sometimes for our own good. But he’s not going to give up on us. We’re family. He is committed to us. He is fully capable of shaping and molding us, restoring his image in us. Let that give us courage to call out for help and not to stop until he answers.
I’m sure we have all started thinking about getting ready for Christmas. We’ll need to do some shopping for presents, some decorating, and some celebrating. Those all have their place. I’m looking forward to those things. But there is one thing we need above all. We need God in our lives. Do we really feel that need? Do we feel the emptiness in ourselves, in our world? Do we care? Are we desperate enough to call out with Isaiah, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down?” Amen
