Scripture: Isaiah 64
Video Link: https://youtu.be/U8ejSDq3bgg
Structure:
- Introduction
- God’s intervention and absence
- God’s goodness and anger
- God’s gentleness and severity
- Conclusion
Introduction:
Good morning everyone.
If you try sucking a lemon, it tastes pretty sour. Sets your teeth on edge. But if you mix the lemon with a bit of honey and water, it’s delicious and good for you.
Likewise, if you bite into a raw onion on its own, the taste will make your eyes water. It’s not pleasant. But if you cook the onion with a bit of balsamic vinegar and brown sugar, it tastes delicious.
Lemon and honey, sugar and vinegar, these are classic sweet and sour flavours in cooking. You wouldn’t know unless you tried it, but somehow, sweet and sour is a winning combination.
We are currently in the season of advent. Advent is a time to remember Jesus’ coming. With this in view, our sermon today is based on Isaiah 64, which is essentially a prayer for God to come down to earth.
Isaiah 64 is a sweet and sour prayer. In the context of Isaiah, the relationship between God and his people is not good, it’s like sucking a lemon. The people are affected by exile and feeling the distance between themselves and the Lord. The prophet balances this sourness with a little honey. From verse 1 we read…
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! 2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! 3 For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. 4 Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. 5 You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? 6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. 7 No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over toour sins. 8 Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9 Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look on us, we pray, for we are all your people. 10 Your sacred cities have become a desert; even Zion is a desert, Jerusalem a desolation. 11 Our holy and glorious temple, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned with fire, and all that we treasured lies in ruins.
12 After all this, O Lord, will you hold yourself back? Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure?
May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate God’s word for us.
We find a number of sweet and sour combinations in the prayer of Isaiah 64. Our message today focuses on three in particular: God’s intervention and absence. God’s goodness and anger. As well as God’s gentleness and severity. Let’s begin with God’s intervention and absence.
God’s intervention and absence:
How many of you yell at the ref when you are watching a sports game?
And how many of you live with someone who yells at the ref? Be honest now.
It can be frustrating when the ref makes a bad call and unfair play is allowed. Personally, I don’t care. It’s just a game. But for some of you the compulsion to step onto the field and intervene is very strong.
Modern technology has advanced to the point where the TMO does intervene at times. In fact, in cricket, the players can challenge the on-field decision and ask the third umpire for a second opinion.
In verse 1 of Isaiah 64, the prophet makes an impassioned plea for God’s intervention saying, O that you would rend the heavens and come down that the mountains would tremble before you…
Before we unpack this verse, you should know this sweet and sour prayer actually begins at verse 7 of Isaiah 63. So, this plea for God’s intervention comes somewhere near the centre of the prayer. Isaiah 64, verse 1 is the heart of the prayer, which means it is probably the most important part.
That word rend means to rip or to tear open. In Old Testament times, rending or tearing your clothes was a sign of grief or remorse. It was a dramatic way of showing everyone that you did not agree with what was happening. Sometimes it signalled repentance. Other times the rending of garments was a sign of protest, like yelling at the ref.
Asking God to rend the heavens was like asking God to tear his clothes in protest at the status quo. But God appears to be unresponsive, aloof and disengaged. The prophet wants God to visibly show his outrage at the state of affairs. He’s asking God (the third umpire) to come onto the field and right some wrongs.
The mountains of verse 1 are a metaphor for imposing and oppressive obstacles. [1] Whether Isaiah’s audience are in exile or returning from exile, they are up against it. The prophet wants God to come down from heaven in power to deal with the challenges his people on earth face.
He wants God to put heat on Israel’s enemies, as when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil.
Fire is a catalyst for change. Fire makes things happen. If God came down to intervene that would be the catalyst they needed, just like the days of old when God intervened to deliver Israel from slavery in Egypt.
Some commentators reckon the prophet is confronting God and the people with an intolerable tension between the past and the present. [2]
God intervened before, why won’t the Lord intervene again?
For God’s people in exile the contrast between then and now is as stark as a lush green forest and a barren brown desert. The people have gone from a land of milk and honey to a land of tripe and onions. They have exchanged freedom in Palestine for captivity in Babylon. And when they finally did return to the Promised Land, after their exile, they found ruin and disappointment.
One thing is clear, God’s perceived absence has the effect of causing people to miss the Lord and to long for him. “Don’t it always seem to go you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.
There may be times when we feel like exiles in a strange land. Times when we wish God would intervene to change our situation and yet, despite our earnest prayers, nothing changes. The water doesn’t boil and the mountains still stand in our way.
The Lord disciplines those he loves. Sometimes God’s perceived absence and inaction refines us. It moves us to sort out our priorities and realign our values. It sharpens our yearning for intimacy with God.
God’s goodness and anger:
So why doesn’t God intervene? Well, the prophet thinks it has to do with the sweet and sour combination of God’s goodness and anger.
Most people wouldn’t naturally put goodness and anger together. We tend to associate anger with violence or a lack of self-control. Christians often think of anger like a wild animal, something bad to be avoided. Even secular society frowns on anger (in NZ at least).
And while it’s true that not all expressions of anger are good, there is a right kind of anger. At its heart, anger is the natural and unavoidable response to injustice.
In the same way that your body reacts to an infection by producing antibodies to fight the infection, so too your soul reacts to injustice by producing anger to oppose the injustice. Anger is our soul’s natural immune response to something immoral or wrong and therefore it is good.
But, just as our physical immune system can sometimes overreact and attack healthy cells, so too our soul (or our psyche) can misdirect anger. We might take our anger out on someone who doesn’t deserve it, or we might turn our anger inward where it festers into self-hatred and depression.
God’s anger is never misdirected or out of proportion. God doesn’t fly off the handle in a fit of rage. God’s anger is tempered with self-control. God’s anger is a carefully measured and fair response against evil and injustice. Without God’s anger, there is no justice and without justice there is no peace.
In verses 4 and 5, the prophet directs our attention to the goodness of God saying: Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.
God is unique. He is one of a kind. There is no one else like Yahweh. Not only is the Lord powerful he is also just and merciful, acting to help those who do what is right. This speaks to the goodness of God’s character.
It also suggests the problem for Israel. If Yahweh were a pagan god the people might think they could bribe him or manipulate him with sacrifices. But the Lord Almighty is not like the gods of other nations. He is free. He won’t be bribed or manipulated.
God does good because he is good. Likewise, God gets angry with evil because he cannot abide injustice.
You may have seen an ad on TV where the mum is wiping the kitchen bench with a piece of raw chicken – not very hygienic. The point of the ad is that using a dirty old dish cloth to wipe down the bench just spreads the germs around.
It makes things worse. What you need is a clean new cloth.
The prophet puts his finger on the problem in verses 5 and 6, where he says…
…But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? 6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…
It’s like the prophet is saying, spiritually speaking we’ve become like someone trying to keep the kitchen clean with a dirty cloth. We may as well be wiping the bench with a piece of raw chicken. Our righteous acts, our best intentions, are just spreading the salmonella of sin around and making things worse.
The prophet also uses the image of a leaf blown away by the wind. In verse 6 he says, we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
As long as the leaf stays connected to the tree it lives and breathes. But once the leaf is separated from the tree it dies. With this metaphor, God’s people are like leaves which have become disconnected from the tree.
The wind, in this word picture, is sin. Sin separates people from God, the source of life. The prophet is probably alluding to the exile. The nation sinned against God badly and for a long time. As a consequence, they were swept away to Babylon. This explains Israel’s disconnect with God.
The prophet is basically saying, we have excluded ourselves from the worshiping community and there’s nothing we can do to get back in.
We admit, the problem is less with our enemies and more with us.
The alienation between God and his people finds expression in verse 7 where the prophet says: No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.
‘To call on the name of the Lord’ means to pray. The prophet is praying on behalf of the people because the people have given up trying to pray themselves. They don’t believe God will listen to them because of their sins.
It’s a Catch 22 situation. The only way we’re going to get through this is with God’s help (with him coming down to save us). But God isn’t going to help us because we’ve broken faith with him and he is angry. So what’s the point in praying? We’d just be wasting our breath.
The people feel hopeless because God has hidden his face. What does it mean for God to hide his face? At the end of the service each week, when I give the benediction, I say… May the Lord make his face shine upon you… This is based on Aaron’s priestly blessing for the people of Israel in the wilderness.
To have the Lord’s face shine upon you is like saying, may God smile on you. May God’s presence light your way through life, so you are not afraid and do not stumble. May God bless you with warmth and wisdom and vitality.
If that is what it means for God to shine his face upon you, then hiding his face is the opposite. When God hides his face, we stumble in darkness. Without the light of God’s presence, we are afraid because we cannot see a way forward. The signs of God’s grace and blessing are hidden from us.
When God is angry, he doesn’t usually storm in and smash things. More often God hides his face; he steps back, he withdraws his light, so we stumble in the dark and suffer the consequences of our actions.
There’s a certain irony in God’s goodness. On the one hand God’s goodness enables life to function on earth. More than that, God’s goodness supports trust. It is because God is good that we can trust him.
But at the same time, God’s goodness prevents us from getting close to him. We are not always righteous or just and therefore we risk provoking God’s anger. We need a third person (someone good) to intercede for us, to pray on our behalf. Jesus is that third person. He is the righteous one who bridges the gap, restoring the communication with God.
Have there been times in your life when you felt like God was hiding his face from you; times when you gave up on prayer? Who interceded for you during that time? Give thanks to God for them.
Now ask yourself, is there someone who needs me to carry them in prayer at the moment? Jesus lends us his righteousness that we might intercede for others before God in prayer.
God’s gentleness and severity:
Isaiah 64 is a sweet and sour prayer. The prophet longs for God’s intervention, during a time when God’s absence is felt keenly. The prophet acknowledges God’s goodness together with God’s anger, his opposition to injustice. Now let’s consider the combination of God’s gentleness and severity.
As a kid, I remember watching a potter form a bowl out of clay. I was transfixed, watching the vessel take shape on the wheel.
Every now and then the potter would look up at me and smile. He was completely silent, didn’t say a word, just let his hands do the talking.
There was a gentleness in those hands, a sensitivity. The potter wasn’t forcing the clay, he was respecting it, feeling for it’s true form. He was an artist.
In verse 8 we read…
Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Here the prophet puts two images of God together. The Lord (Yahweh) is both a father to us and a potter. In other words, God is our creator and we are his handiwork, his children. We owe our very existence to God.
A good father, like a good potter, has a gentle touch. Just as a potter skilfully shapes and forms the clay into a functional form, so too a father tenderly shapes and forms his children into maturity.
The Jewish exiles were like a lump of clay. They were in a state of chaos.
They had little form or shape or function in Babylon. And, like a lump of clay, they were completely helpless. There was nothing they could do to shape themselves. They were entirely dependent on God to reform them as a nation.
Why does a potter work with clay to create something? Because he is a potter and that’s what potters do. Why should God reform and remake the exiles into a new nation? Because he is the creator and that’s what the creator does.
The prophet is not asking God to act on the basis of the people’s righteousness. He has just admitted they have no righteousness. The prophet is asking God to act on the basis of who God is. Creator and Father.
Making pottery is not all gentleness and grace. After the vessel is formed it goes into a fiery furnace where it bakes at a severe temperature to make it strong and durable. Yes, God is gentle. We could say gentleness is God’s default setting. Gentleness is how God deals with us most of the time. But there are occasions, from our perspective, when God can be quite severe.
In verses 10 and 11 the prophet describes the state of Israel. The cities have become a desert and Jerusalem a desolation. The temple has been burned with fire and all that was treasured lies in ruins. This is a picture of God’s severity.
We have heard enough about God’s severity over the past three weeks, as we unpacked Mark 13. I don’t need to labour the point today. Suffice to say, God is not like Santa Claus. He is not a benign old man who indulges our every whim. As C.S. Lewis reminds us, God is good but he is not safe. Respect him. He holds your eternity in his hands.
Having reminded God of his severity, the prophet then concludes his prayer with a question: 12 After all this, O Lord, will you hold yourself back? Will you keep silent and punish us beyond measure?
That’s how the prayer ends, left hanging with the question unanswered.
We know, from our vantage point in history, that the Lord did not hold himself back. We know God does not punish beyond measure. The prayer of Isaiah 64 is answered in the person of Jesus.
Conclusion:
The prophet had asked for God to rend the heavens and come down to help them. Roughly five centuries later, at Jesus’ baptism, we read…
And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. [with gentleness]
Jesus is the divine intervention the prophet had asked for. Jesus is God’s presence among us, in human form. Jesus is the potter and the clay. Jesus is the catalyst for change, making things happen in heaven and on earth.
Jesus moved the mountains of sin and death, to restore our relationship with God. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s goodness, the ultimate expression of God’s gentleness and justice. Jesus is the face of God, shining upon us.
Let us pray. Father God, you are the potter, we are the clay. Thank you for rending the heavens and coming down. Thank you for answering Isaiah’s prayer in and through Jesus. Amen.
Questions for discussion or reflection:
- What stands out for you in reading this Scripture and/or in listening to the sermon? Why do you think this stood out to you?
- Do you yell at the ref during a sports game? Do you know someone who does? Why do people do that? Why does the prophet call for God to rend the heavens and come down?
- Have there been times in your life when you longed for God to intervene? What happened?
- Have there been times in your life when you felt like God was absent? How did this affect you?
- Why do we need anger? When is anger good? When is anger not good? What strategies do you have for managing your anger well?
- Discuss / reflect on Isaiah 64:7. Why did the people give up praying to God? Have there been times when you felt like prayer was useless? Why did you feel that way? Did anyone intercede for you (pray on your behalf) during that time? Is there someone who needs you to carry them in prayer at the moment?
- What purpose does God’s gentleness serve? What purpose does God’s severity serve? What is your perception of God? In your mind, is God all gentleness or all severity or a bit of both? Do you have the balance right?
[1] Refer John Watts, Word Commentary on Isaiah, page 335.
[2] Refer Paul Hanson’s commentary on Isaiah, page 237.
Tawa Baptist 