“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! 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! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. 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. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? 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. 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 to our sins.
Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. 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.” (Isaiah 64:1-9 NIV)
What do you say when things go wrong? Not just a little wrong. Like really wrong. What do you say when life seems unfair and cruel and unjust? When all the wrong people get all the wrong things? When disaster seems to strike you and those you love again and again? What do you say? Probably not words you want me to hear… Do you know what people in the Bible would say? “Come down!” When believers in God were frustrated with what they saw in life, they prayed, “Come down!” Like King David. He said, “Part your heavens, O Lord, and come down; touch the mountains, so that they smoke” (Psalm 144:5-6). What did David pray? “God, come down!”
That’s exactly what Isaiah prays in God’s Word today. “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!” That was Isaiah’s prayer: “Come down!” There was urgency and frustration in Isaiah’s voice. “God, we need you to act now! What are you waiting for? Tear apart the sky and come down and help your people!” Can you understand what he was saying? “God, there is so much sin. So many people are against you. God, get them! Come down and judge them! Now, please.” Have you ever felt that way?
Isaiah saw some difficult things. He saw unbelievers attack God’s people—and win! And he knew it would happen again. He saw kings and leaders arrogantly turn away from God. He hated it. There is nothing more frustrating in life than seeing people who don’t believe in God have so much more success that people who do. So Isaiah prayed, “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!” As quickly as fire burns up twigs, “God, do something! Punish them. Get them!” God promises to carry out justice, right? Why wait? Do it now. Come down!
There was precedence. God had done this before. God has often come down and done amazing things. “For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.” Can you think of awesome things Isaiah might have had in mind? Maybe the 10 plagues in Egypt, like turning water to blood (Exodus 7-11). Maybe the parting of the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross on dry land (Exodus 13-15). Maybe the day that God made the sun stand still in the sky as the Israelites defeated their enemies (Joshua 10). God had done this before. It was time for God to act again. “Rend the heavens and come down!”
How often do you pray that? Sometimes we pastors complain that people don’t take sin seriously. That’s not really true. All people take sin seriously. We take other people’s sins very seriously. This year has proven that. Think of the outrage in America over everything. On one side, people can’t stand the support of abortion and sexual immorality. “This isn’t right. God, get them!” On the other side, people can’t stand the destruction of the environment and the lack of concern for the poor and the sick and the immigrant. “This isn’t right. God, get them!” Every single person on earth takes sin seriously. We want justice. We want God to act. “Come down!”
Isaiah was confident that God would. He prayed, “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 works in mysterious ways, doesn’t he? Faith trusts that God can and will accomplish his will no matter what we see. There is no God like our God. Isaiah was ready for God to act again. “God, you come to the help of those who gladly do right, so come down! Get them! Now! Come down!”
But as Isaiah wrote those words, he started to think things through. If God were really to come down and do away with evildoers and punish the wicked—just like we say we want him to—whom would God end up punishing? Uh-oh. If God comes and judges sin, who’s in trouble? You and me. If we call on God to punish the evil in the world, whom should he start with? You and me. Uh-oh. “But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?” Did you catch Isaiah’s change of tone? From “Get them!” to “Uh-oh, we’re in trouble!”
What follows is one of the most honest, harshest confessions of sin in the Bible: “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. 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 to our sins.” Who’s like that? All of us. Sin isn’t just the injustice that’s rampant in our world. It’s me. It’s you. By nature, we’re as dry and dead inside as the leaves that blow around in the wind. Put that on your Facebook profile: “Hi. I’m dying from sin, and it’s contagious. Friend me, and I’ll hurt you.”
The Bible shows us the depths of our sin. “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” I’m not just sinful because of what I do. I’m unclean. Sinful by nature. That sin corrupts everything. We don’t just lapse into bad behavior sometimes. We’re sinners. Even the good things we do are tainted by sinful desires. Us thinking we can do good on our own is like a toddler thinking he can change his own dirty diaper. What happens? He gets it all over his fingers and his clothes and his face. Covered with filth. That’s us. “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”
Here’s what’s missing in our world today. Not the concept of sin. The concept of my sin. We take sin seriously. Here’s what we don’t do: We don’t take our sin seriously. We think a lot about his sin. About her sin. We can’t stand their sin. Here’s what’s missing: My sin. When King David committed adultery, he refused to repent. So God sent the prophet Nathan to him. Nathan told David the story of a rich man who stole the one little lamb that belonged to a poor man. David was angry. “How could he do that! God should destroy him! God, get him!” Like you and me: “How could they do that?” Do you know what Nathan said to David? “You are the man!”
That’s what God’s Word says to you and to me. You want God to come down and punish sin? You’re the man! You want God to carry out justice against everyone who does wrong? You’re the woman! You want evil to be squashed? You’re the people. I am too. The greatest problem in life is not Democrats or Republicans or your boss or your spouse or a virus. You are the man. You are the woman. It’s your sin. For me, it’s my sin. “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” “How then can we be saved?”
That’s what Isaiah asked, “How then can we be saved?” Well, he fell onto God’s grace: “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. 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.” Isaiah fell onto God’s grace. Maybe Isaiah remembered what Nathan said to David when he confessed his sin, “The Lord has taken away your sin” (2 Samuel 12:13). Or maybe Isaiah knew the words David wrote in Psalm 103: “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love… He does not treat us as our sins deserve… As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”
“Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” Martin Luther said this prayer to God: “Although in darkness our reason thinks that you are angry, our faith concludes that you are our Father, because it grasps the promises.” What promises? Earlier in Isaiah, God promised, “This is what the Lord says—he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.’” (Isaiah 43:1). In darkness, faith holds on to God our Father’s promises.
Remember how Isaiah said, “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”? No one could have possibly come up with God’s plan to save us. There is only one person who deserves to call God his Father—Jesus. Jesus should have stood at his Father’s right hand in heaven and told God, “Get them! Look at what they’ve done.” But instead, Jesus said, “I’ll go.” So God did come down, just like Isaiah wanted. It’s just that what God did is not what we ever would have expected. Jesus didn’t come to judge. He came to be judged. He didn’t come down to punish. He came to be punished. Jesus came to take our sins away forever through his death on the cross.
Could you have thought that up? Could you have imagined that God would come down, but not to punish. To die? For us? Isn’t that amazing? That’s why the Bible says, “This is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). God’s Son was forsaken, so that you and I could become the sons and daughters of God. Forgiven. Loved. That’s who you are! This is grace! “How then can we be saved?,” Isaiah asked. If we were going to be saved, God had to do it. And he did! So, “repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). That’s what Jesus preached: “Repent and believe the good news.”
God came down. That’s what we think about during Advent. The word “Advent” means coming. This is what we get to celebrate at Advent and Christmas: How God came down. Whenever we say to God, “Come down! Do something!” Jesus gently reminds us, “I did.” Not with fire. Thank God! He came as a little baby. He gladly did right and remembered God’s ways. Just like we haven’t. He died on the cross to forgive all of our sins. He rose from the dead to give us eternal life. He came. Jesus really came down. Don’t let any of the foolishness of our world make you miss the greatest truth in the world over the next month: Jesus came down to save you!
And he’s going to come again. While our sins are forgiven, our frustrations aren’t gone. Not as long as we’re in this world. And what do believers say when things go wrong? “Come down!” Not to punish them. But to take us home. We long for the day when we get to see the new heavens and the new earth. When death and COVID and sin and pain will never be on our minds again. “Come down!” That’s a good prayer! Think of the hymns we sing in Advent: “Savior of the Nations, Come.” “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Sadness and death loosen our grip on this world. “Come and take us home!” That’s the final prayer of the Bible, “Come Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). “Come, save your people.” And Jesus says, “I did, and I will.” Wait for him.
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