Our only hope is for God to come down from heaven

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 25

Isaiah 64:1-12

As we start into the last three chapters of the book of Isaiah this evening, we reach the grand climax of the book. We hear Isaiah pleading in chapter 64, pleading for God to come and save the miserable, pitiable people of Israel. And in the last two chapters, God will answer. And His answer, as usual, is one of comfort and everlasting victory for those who repent and believe in Him, and one of rejection and eternal condemnation for those who refuse to repent. Israel, in its Old Testament form, would cease to exist because of their impenitence. But the believing remnant of Israel, Israel in its New Testament form, will inherit the new heavens and the new earth. But, as Isaiah knows very well, the only way for anyone at all to be saved is for God to come down from heaven.

Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might shake at Your presence, as when the melting fire burns, as the fire causes the waters to boil, to make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence!

Isaiah foresees Jerusalem already in ruins. He sees the people of Israel sitting in darkness, with no hope. No hope, except for this—if only God would come down from heaven! If only He would rend the heavens, tear the heavens open and come down to earth to save them. That’s the only possible way for sinners to be saved. God Himself has to do it. And He has to do it in person.

He had come down once before to rescue Israel. When You did awesome things for which we did not look, You came down; the mountains quaked at Your presence. Again Isaiah looks back to the redemption of Israel from slavery in Egypt, when God had come down and performed wonders for His people, when He had guided them through the wilderness, when He had spoken to them from Mt. Sinai and made a covenant of peace with them, when He had fought for them against all their enemies. That’s the kind of thing Isaiah wants Him to do again!

For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by ear, neither has the eye seen a God besides You, who acts for the one who waits for Him. You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, those who remember You in Your ways. No other god comes in person to save. Even the stories of the ancient Greek or Roman gods who appeared to men from time to time are all stories of incest and adultery, stories of selfish, self-centered gods who were looking out for themselves. That’s the best kind of god mankind could invent. No other god came down from heaven out of mercy, to rescue His errant people, except for Yahweh, the true God, the God of Israel. He acts for the one who waits for Him. So wait for Him! He has promised to act on your behalf. He meets him who rejoices in doing righteousness. So rejoice in doing what is right in God’s sight, and remember your God in everything you do!

Indeed, You were angry, for we had sinned; in our sins we remained a long time, and shall we be saved? But we all are as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness is as filthy rags; and we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. There is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs up himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have consumed us because of our iniquities.

Isaiah places himself forward, at the time of Jerusalem’s destruction and the Babylonian captivity. By that time, the vast majority of godly Israelites would be gone. And even the godly had to admit that, according to the strict judgment of the Law, even their righteousness, even their good works were unclean, were polluted with sin. Not even the believers kept the Law so as to be saved by their good works. How much less the unbelieving in Israel who remained in their impenitence. They had sinned and remained in their sins for a long time. God’s anger toward them was justified, as were His plans to bring judgment upon them.

But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are our potter; and we all are the work of Your hand.

Here is the penitent cry of the believer. The penitent “sigh,” you might say. After all the anxiety about the sad state of the nation, the sad state of the Church, the believer casts all his anxiety on God, and says, “Here, Father! Take it. You’re in charge here. We know that. We are in Your hands. We know that you will do what is right.” With that in mind, Isaiah makes a final plea:

Do not be wrathful beyond measure, O LORD, nor remember iniquity forever; look upon us, we pray, we all are Your people. Your holy cities are a wilderness; Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised You is burned up with fire; and all our precious things are laid waste. Will You refrain Yourself from these things, O LORD? Will You hold Your peace and afflict us beyond measure?

In Isaiah’s time those things hadn’t happened yet. Jerusalem wasn’t a desolation, yet. Zion wasn’t a wilderness, yet. The temple wasn’t burned up with fire, yet. But Isaiah saw it as clearly as if he had been transported 120 years into the future. And as he looks out at the burning, desolate landscape of Judea and Jerusalem, he pleads with the Lord to not be angry forever, to remember His mercy and love. In other words, He pleads with the Lord to ordain an end date to Israel’s suffering, to set a day and an hour when He would rend the heavens and come down to save His people from their misery.

And that’s just what the Lord did. Not when Cyrus came along and finally released Israel from captivity in Babylon. No, the Lord didn’t come down from heaven for that, but reigned in heaven over world events to cause it to happen. But the Lord did finally come down from heaven, in person, about 700 years after Isaiah’s time. He came down as a little baby who was placed in a manger in the little town of Bethlehem. He dwelled among the very kind of sinners who had caused God’s wrath against Israel in the first place, not to destroy them, but to bring them to repentance, to call them back into His kingdom of grace. Yes, God, the Son of God, came down from heaven, in person, and made Himself the one atoning sacrifice that can turn away the righteous wrath of God, and now calls all men to be reconciled to God through Him.

The same Jesus, God, the Son of God, will come down from heaven just one more time. Jesus talked about it in the lesson you heard this evening from Luke’s Gospel. And what will the world be like leading up to His return? Just as in the days of Noah, leading up to the flood that destroyed the world. Just as in the days of Sodom, leading up to its destruction by fire and brimstone. So will the world be. And just as Israel was, leading up to its destruction, so will the Visible Church be. And, if you look at the state of the world and of the Church, you can’t help but notice that mankind is ripe for destruction once again. So let us pray to the Lord with Isaiah, in humility, in repentance, and, most of all, in hope, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down!” And you can be sure that He will, at just the right time. Amen.